womb of the morning dawn.-The figure of the dew denotes fruitfulness, multitude, and such abundance as produces further fruitfulness: (compare Mich. vi. 7.) to thee shall be born a numerous race, and that again shall produce to thee an abundant progeny." De Sacra Poesi Hebr. præl. x.

The principal difficulty lies in determining to whom the address is made in L. 9. As it is well known that many of the Psalms are written in the dramatic form, it seems very probable that here the poet turns to Jehovah, as distinguished from Adonai in L. 1. Kennicott and Horsley were disposed to insert Jehovah, or God, as the nominative, and make Adonai the vocative. "In the first verse, the Lord' is distinguished from Jehovah, and placed at his right hand. It is difficult to believe that at so small a distance in the same Psalm, both the titles and the situations should be interchanged, viz. Jehovah called the Lord, and placed at the Lord's right hand. I am, therefore, much inclined to indulge in a conjecture, which Dr. Kennicott, too, seems to have entertained, that the word in' or 'nbe, hath been lost out of the text after the word 7, and should be restored."-Horsley's Psalms, vol. ii. p. 256.

SECT. XVIII.

THE LORD; THE KING; INFINITELY HOLY; JEHOVAH.

Is. vi. 1, 2, 3, 5.

"I saw the Lord [Adonai] seated upon a high and exalted throne, and his beams filling the temple. Seraphs stood on high before him,- and one to the other cried and said, "Holy, holy, holy, Jehovah of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory."And I said, -And I said, "Alas for me!- -the King, Jehovah of hosts, mine eyes have seen!

"

"THESE words said Isaiah, when he saw HIS glory, and spake concerning HIM;"* that is, the Messiah, as the context in the evangelist proves, and as indeed is generally admitted.† In narrating this vision, the prophet denominates the person whose glory he beheld, ADONAI, as the Messiah is so distinguishingly styled in Psalm cx. but he, not less explicitly, attributes to him the

* John xii. 41.

66

+ The Zohar of R. Simeon ben Jochai (see the note on Gen. xlix. 10), says, in an incidental reference to this passage;The tradition is that, in every place where" occur, there [is meaned] the Shechinah." Zohar in Gen. ap. Schattg. Hor. Hebr. et Talm, tom. ii. 158. &c. This [] with the Holy and Blessed God, one: This [m] with the Shechinah, one: and all, Jehovah.”—P. 159.

"And this to this [mm] cried,

supreme and incommunicable name of deity. The conclusion seems inevitable, that either the language of prophecy is blameably and dangerously incorrect, or that the Messiah is indeed JEHOVAH of hosts.

Some have affirmed that the pronouns in the passage of John, refer to the Almighty Father, because "the Lord," in v. 38, is the nearest antecedent.* But this proceeds upon a misapprehension. The appropriate use of the pronoun in question,† is to mark the person or thing which is the principal subject of the discourse. If it were possible for any one to read the whole preceding connection, and have any doubt that Christ is that subject, his doubt could not but be dissipated by the next sentence: "Yet many even of the rulers believed on HIM."

Others have preferred to say that the demonstrative" these things," r" these words," in the Evangelist refer, not to the quotation immediately preceding, but to the first passage quoted, "Lord, who hath believed our report?"-But this is a purely arbitrary and violent construction. On all the principles of grammar and the common use of language, the reference may indeed include both the passages, but must refer to the latter as the immediate and necessary object.

* Enjedini Expl. Locorum V. and N. T. p. 233, † Αυτός.

The Calm Inquirer acquiesces in another solution: "the prophet saw, that is, foresaw, the glory of Christ, as Abraham saw, i. e. foresaw, his day: John viii, 56."*

But, 1. this assertion is purely arbitrary, and is unsupported by attempt at proof,

2. There is no parallelism between the case of Isaiah, in this vision, and that of Abraham. Abraham" eagerly desired† to see the day" of Christ; "and he did see it, and rejoiced." No particular time or manner is specified of the desire or the vision. The "day of Christ," or period of his ministry and of the gospel dispensation, was a future event, and could be seen only in some prophetic representation; and many such representations were made to Abraham. But the vision of Isaiah furnishes no appearance in the circumstances, nor the slightest intimation in the description, of any thing future: for the obduracy of the Jewish people, though afterwards it became justly chargeable on the contemporaries of Jesus, is in the original passage plainly a matter of present fact, not of prediction. The notion of foreseeing the glory of Christ is a mere pretence, invented before either Grotius or Dr. Clarke,

* "Dr. Clarke, after Grotius, and with him all the Unitarians, understand the evangelist as affirming, that the prophet saw, &c."-Calm Inquiry, p. 213.

† Ἠγαλλιάσατο, see Schleusner.

by the Polish Socinians, in order to serve a system.

3. Granting it, however, this notion does not serve its purpose. If any words are clear and definite, those here used are so, to express, that the object presented in vision to the prophet, whether seen or foreseen, was the glory of the Lord JEHOVAH, the Being whom the hosts of heaven adore. It would be useless to reason with any one who could read the passage, and deny this.†

We find, then, that the apostle John did not hesitate to make a direct application to the person of his Lord and Master, of the loftiest style of Deity that the Old Testament could furnish.

*"Ita ergò dicetur hic Esaias vidisse gloriam, id est, prophetâsse de gloriâ: non quòd tunc viderit, sed quòd prædixerit, gloriam Christi. Qui sensus et probus, et nobis non est contrarius." "Thus Isaiah will here be said to have seen the glory, that is to have prophesied about it; not that he then saw, but foretold, the glory of Christ, Which is a good sense, and not contrary to our sentiments." Enjedini Expl. Lo

The same objections lie against the passage from Clarke, referred to by Mr. B. and transcribed as if oracular in the Annot, on the Impr. Vers. It is evasive, arbitrary, incongruous, and inadequate to its intention.