BRITAIN’S STEAM MARINE FORETOLD BY ISAIAH.

            “Which sendeth by sea whirling things even upon vessels of fleetness on the surface of waters.” Tzirim uvkli-gma ol-pni-mim, pronounced tzirim uviklai gome al-penai-mayim. —This is the original which I have rendered “whirling things even upon vessels of fleetness on the surface of waters.” Could any thing be more descriptive of steamers as they appear to a spectator when gliding over the water? He sees a vessel moving with rapidity, and observes something on its sides whirling with remarkable velocity. After beholding such a vessel for the first time in motion from a position exterior to it, its fleetness and whirling things would be the two characteristics by which he would describe it to others. I do not doubt that the prophet understood that in the evening time there would be a great maritime power sending swift vessels by sea to its possessions in India, propelled by whirling things instead of by sails. It is a fact, that such a power exists, and navigates the waters of the Red Sea with fleet vessels without sails; which before his day bore on their surface the sluggish craft of Solomon and his Tyrian ally in their voyages to the Indian Tarshish. This fact is foretold in the prophet’s description of the shadowing land. It is remarkable, exceedingly so; and therefore to attract attention more certainly to it, I have placed this annotation under a distinct and conspicuous title. Let it be read in connection with what has gone before, and with what is yet to come.

            These whirling things on vessels of fleetness, Dr. Lowth styles “ambassadors on the sea in vessels of papyrus!” The bishop of Rochester calls them, “messengers by sea in bulrush-vessels!” Boothroyd has it, “ambassadors on the sea in floats of papyrus!” And the king’s version, “ambassadors by sea in vessels of bulrushes!” Strange they did not suspect the propriety of “ambassadors” as the translation of tzirim. Perhaps they did; for instead of saying Go, ye swift ambassadors, they have it, “Go ye swift messengers.” They saw that two entirely different words were used in the Hebrew; but not knowing wherein the difference lay, they selected two distinct orthographies, with but little real difference of signification between them. Ambassadors and messengers are persons sent. The shadowing land’s ambassadors are supposed by the learned to be the messengers ordered to go swiftly.

            The word tzirim is a noun masculine plural from tzir, “to go in a circle, to revolve.” It has probably some affinity to the obsolete root tznr, pronounced tzahnar, to whirr, or whizz, especially expressive of the rushing sound of water falling from a wheel in rapid motion. Revolvers, or whirling things, tzirim, is the Spirit’s word for what we term paddle-wheels, which are things going in a circle. Tzir is indeed properly rendered ambassador or messenger in Jeremiah 49: 14, and Obadiah 1; but still the radical idea is retained of one going in a circle, or making a circuit of the nations. The tzirim of our text, however, cannot be things going in a circle in an ambassadorial circuit; for they are tzirim-viklai-gome “on vessels of fleetness,” performing their circuits on their sides. The translators referred to, did not perceive the application of tzirim to the paddle-wheels of vessels; for, with the exception of Dr. Boothroyd, there were no such things in the range of their observation or knowledge.

            “Fleetness,” gome. —This is rendered by the hermeneutists, “papyrus,” “bulrush,” and bulrushes.” Moses was exposed on the margin of Sihor in tavath gome, an ark, or water-tight basket, of bulrush, or papyrus reed. The word is indeed applied to the bulrush, or papyrus reed; but then it is a question, why it is so applied? If we can ascertain this, we may find that it has a more appropriate signification for Isaiah 18: 2.

            The word gimai is both a noun and a verb. The Masorites, whose points are convenient, but without authority, distinguish the noun from the verb by their punctuation, which expresses their opinion of what the word ought to be in certain places. They call the verb gahmah, and the noun gome; but on the Hebrew text they are written both the same. It is the infinitive of Piayl in construction, in the text before us, placed there to give prominence to the idea contained in the finite verb. Its punctuation should therefore be gimai and not gome. It stands as a verbal substantive in the construct case.

            The word signifies “to absorb, to drink up, to swallow.” Now, the Egyptian papyrus nilotica, and the bulrush, especially the former, are of a very porous nature, absorbing or drinking up moisture copiously. Hence the papyrus is styled bibulous, bibula papyrus by Lucan, and gma by the Hebrew. The Egyptians made from it garments, shoes, baskets, vessels of various kinds, skiffs, &c. —articles of the water-drinking reed.

            The word in the Piayl conjugation is used poetically of the horse swallowing, as it were, the ground, in his eagerness and fleetness; as in Job 39: 24, igm artz, Masoretically, yegamme-ahretz, “he swalloweth diligently of the ground,” as much as to say, he runs away with it, so great is his fleetness. When a traveller by rail looks at the ground in advance of the train, as it rushes along, he sees the idea represented by the phrase, “swallowing diligently of the ground.” By the same metaphor, and with equal propriety, a ship may be said to drink up of the water diligently, as for a horse or train to swallow diligently of the ground. They are both poetical expressions for a fleet horse, a rapid train, and a fast ship. Hence, as the papyrus literally absorbs copiously of moisture, so poetically or figuratively, a fast vessel drinks rapidly of the water, and a fleet horse diligently of the ground; therefore, the papyrus, the ship, and the horse, are all subjects of one common idea, and that is expressed by the word gma. The phrase kli-gma, pronounced kelai-gome, is then literally translatable, vessels of to drink up diligently; but this very literal rendering is itself metaphorical: diligent drinking up is quick, or rapid drinking; ships rapidly drinking up of the surface of waters, are vessels rapidly diminishing distance: they are fleet vessels, or “vessels of fleetness,” kelai-gome, but of no matter-like affinity to the bulrushes of the Nile.

            The Bishop of Rochester had some idea that there was something figurative connected with his “bulrush-vessels,” expressive of the fleetness of the shadowing lands’ marine; but as he had never seen a steamship, the fleetness of his bulrush vessels was confined to their fast sailing. “If the country spoken to,” says he, “be distant from Egypt, vessels of bulrush are only used as an apt image, on account of their levity, for quick sailing vessels of any material. The country, therefore, to which the prophet calls, is characterised as one which, in the days of the completion of this prophecy, shall be a great maritime and commercial power, forming remote alliances, making distant voyages to all parts of the world, with expedition and security, and in the habit of affording protection to their friends and allies.” Thus much the bishop saw even from erroneous premises. He rightly conjectured from the prophet’s reference to the sea and surface of waters, that he was addressing a maritime, and not a continental, power; and as it is to bring a people to Mount Zion as a present to the Name-bearer of Jehovah enthroned there, which no maritime power hath ever done yet, he concluded that the call was to a pre-eminent naval power of the latter days. Providence hath established Britain’s strength to this end. She is exalted among the nations for the work of the time of the end. God hath given her power, skill, gold, and a multitude of large and powerful ships, to be used against the Assyrian, and in the service of Israel and their protectors—Jesus and the Saints. What Hiram was to Solomon, Britain will be to Him who is greater than he. The steam-marine of the latter-day Tyrians trading to Tarshish is the navy prepared of Jehovah for his King. The twelve tribes are his land forces; the ships of Tarshish his marine.

            “Swiftly.” The verb leku is used intensively, as, “to go swiftly, to rush;” and comports well with the sort of vessels commonly sent “express” by the overshadowing land.

            “Fleet messengers”—mlakim klim, pronounced malakim kallim. The word malahk signifies “one sent” from lahak, he sent; therefore, a messenger; and in Greek, an angelos, a word transferred into English with the loss of the last syllable. The word is in the plural in the text. “Fleet,” kallim, from kahlal, to be swift. The rapidity of the vessels is affirmed of the messengers sent by them. They are to go express, or without unnecessary delay, as the crisis demands energy, promptness, and dispatch.

            “To a nation carried away and oppressed,” el goi memusshahk umorat. Boothroyd renders this, “to a nation extended and fierce.” Dr. Lowth has it, “to a nation stretched out in length and smoothed.” The Bishop of Rochester renders it, “unto a nation dragged away and plucked.” James’s translators do better than any of these in the sentence, “to a nation scattered and peeled;” but then they were not satisfied with it, but tried to amend it on the margin by “outspread and polished.” In Robinson’s Gesenius the lexicographer renders goi mmshk umorat, “a people drawn out, or extended, i.e., tall of stature and naked!” They all agree that a drawing out is the radical idea of memusshahk; but what sort of a drawing out it is, they are not agreed. As we have seen, Dr. Lowth explains it of the stretching out of Egypt along the Nile. He assumed that Egypt was “the land of the winged-cymbal,” exhorted to send the messengers; and by making Egypt also the “nation stretched out”—he makes Egypt send the messengers to itself! Lowth, Boothroyd, Rochester, and the King’s, drawing out or extension, is horizontal; but Gesenius’ is a perpendicular extension, a drawing up instead of a drawing out!

            The word is used in several places intensively for taking away, removing, by violence, destroying. “Dragged away” is the sense of the word in the text, as given by Rochester. I have rendered it, carried away, as more in keeping with the scripture expression relative to the same nation, “carried away captive” into “their enemies’ lands.”

            A smoothed, plucked, or peeled, nation, to say the least of it, is not euphonious. Dr. Lowth styles his stretched-out nation, “smoothed” in the sense of being clean shaven or made smooth by mud-sediment! But whether smoothed by mud or lather he cannot tell! If the nation were alluded to under the figure of a bird, “plucked,” would very well express the idea of its being stripped of all its glory and left naked. Without hair, beard, or feathers, the nation would doubtless have become as “polished” as shaving and plucking could make it! The King’s translators do not tell us in what other sense it was “polished,” but leave us to our own inferences. I do not see in what sense a nation skinned or peeled can be “polished.” It would certainly not improve its manners. But we must turn from these awkward words, so expressive of the uncertainty of the hermeneutists, and find one more in harmony with the text.

            Morat is participle of Pual from mrt, pronounced mahrat, to polish, to sharpen, and to make smooth. It is used in the sense of making the head smooth, or bald, by tearing out the hair in chastisement; or to cause a peeling of the shoulder by bearing heavy burdens. The oppressing of the shoulder results in the peeling off of the skin. Hence a peeled shoulder, and a smoothed and polished head, becomes an oppressed shoulder, and a plucked head. A nation peeled and smoothed, plucked and polished, or moratised, is a torn and oppressed people. The effect of an action is put for the cause of it, so that the figurative sense of morat is really the most literal in regard to the text in hand. I have therefore rendered it by “oppressed,” which accords exactly with the condition of the nation to which the messengers are sent.

            “Terrible from this and onward,” al-om nora mn-hua uhlah, pronounced el-am norah min-hu wahhahleah. “Terrible from their beginning hitherto;” “terrible from the first and hitherto;” “wonderful from their beginning hitherto”—are the renderings of the several translations before us. These versions affirm the terribleness or wonderfulness of the nation during the whole of its existence. This, however, cannot be predicated of Israel. These tribes were indeed terrible and wonderful in their national beginning, but very far from being so from that epoch “hitherto;” that is, till the express messengers visit them in Britain’s steamers. Ten of the tribes have failed to strike terror into their enemies for upwards of twenty-five hundred years; and the other two have been a despised people four hundred and thirty years after their Chaldean overthrow and nearly eighteen hundred years since Rome’s eagles devoured their carcase under Titus. Lowth and company’s version cannot, therefore, be admitted, seeing it does not state the truth.

            Gesenius renders the text, “a people terrible and farther off than he.” In this he renders “wahhahleah,” and farther off, or beyond, as of space; and min-hu, by “than he.” But in this he entirely mistakes the whole matter. The construction is well illustrated by the phrase—mhiom hhua uhlah, pronounced, maihyyom hahu wahhahleah, “from that day forward.” The radical idea of hahleah is “to a distance, thither-away,” and may be applied to either time or space. But from what point of time doth the to or thither, the onward, commence? The answer is min-hu—“min” being the preposition from; and “hu,” the demonstrative this. “Hu” points out a definite person or thing already mentioned, or well-known from the context. We may then inquire “from this” what? From the evening-tide destruction of Israel’s Assyrian spoiler by their King; when under his banner “Judah fights at Jerusalem,” and “their governors become 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”—Zechariah 12: 5-6; 14: 14. From this onward, shall Israel be a terror to all their foes; and a protection to all who come under the shadow of His wings, who gives them exaltation over all the nations of the world.

            “A nation prostrate and trodden down,” goi kav-kahv umvusahh. The renderings of these words are also various. “A nation meted out and trodden down;” “a nation that meteth out and treadeth down;” “a nation of line, line, and treading under foot;” “a nation meted out by line, and trodden down;” “a nation expecting, expecting, trampled under feet;” “a nation that useth the line, and treadeth down;” and “a nation most mighty.” Surely here are diversities enough to make darkness visible! What a nation this is made to be! Dr. Robinson of New York, the editor of Gesenius, and Professor of Biblical Literature, endorses the idea of its superlative mightiness, while others of equal authority pronounce it to be the weakest of all nations, as meted out and trampled under foot! Who can but laugh, and hold such hermeneutics in derision?

            Kav is a noun, and signifies a measuring line. The repetition of the word thus, kav kahv, is intensive, and imports a continued stretching of the measuring line over any thing. “Jehovah hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying.” Thus, to stretch out a line upon a wall indicates its overthrow, that the measuring line may be extended over the levelled site. If the line be employed with reference to a nation, it imports the levelling of that nation, that it may be trampled under foot. A nation intensely lined is one long prostrate, the idea of prostration being necessary to a being trodden under foot. Jerusalem, said the king of Israel, shall be trodden under foot of the nations until their times be fulfilled. She was first levelled; she was then kav-kahved, or lined intensely; and so long as that line is stretched out, she remains prostrate and trodden down. The fortunes of Israel and their city are the same. Facts in relation to both establish the translation I have given.

            “Whose land rivers have spoiled.” Rivers overflowing their banks represent invading armies. Speaking of the ten tribes in hostility against Jerusalem and the house of David, Isaiah saith, “Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Retzin and Remaliah’s son; now therefore, behold, Jehovah bringeth up upon them the waters of the river (Euphrates) 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: and he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck,” Jerusalem alone of all the land being the head out of the water. Israel’s land has been laid waste by such rivers as these. Daniel predicted a similar inundation which was to overflow the land subsequently to the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem that was to happen after the cutting off of the Messiah the prince, and at the Roman invasion: “the end thereof shall be with a flood,” which he explains of the inundation of war; for he says, “and until the end of the war desolations are decreed.” He also styles the future invasion of the Holy Land by the Russo-Assyrian king of the north an overflowing. There is nothing nourishing in the overflowing of such rivers; but Dr. Lowth’s “learned friend” suggested “nourish” as the meaning of bahzeu, which, as it suited his theory of the land being Egypt or Ethiopia which are fertilised by the Nile, he readily adopted, rendering the sentence “whose land the rivers have nourished.” Gesenius translates the words asher bahzeu nehahrim aretzu, by “whose land rivers rend, i.e., break up into parts, or divide up. The allusion is to Ethiopia.” This is an error; there is no such allusion in the case. The land is Israel’s, not Ethiopia; rent, spoiled, or laid waste by the horns of the Gentiles, whose armies have swept over it like floods of mighty streams.

            “I will be still (yet in my dwelling-place I will be without fear).” In the common version it reads “I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling-place,” or marginally, “regard my set dwelling.” The text places the considering person in the dwelling, and at rest there; the margin, makes him exterior to it, and looking at it. A very important difference this, when we come to understand the locality of the dwelling-place. “I will sit still and regard my own abode; I will be to it as the clear heat after rain.” This is Dr. Boothroyd’s rendering of the words, ashkuth vabith bmkuni kkhm tzk oliaur, pronounced eshkahtah veavbitah vimkoni kekhom tzach alai-or. “I will be to it” are his own words to make what he supposes is the sense. All the translations I have seen make the considerant sitting, not in, but off at a distance, from the dwelling-place; consequently, “the dry heat impending lightning” is made a state of things preceding Jehovah’s entrance into his dwelling-place, instead of, as it really is, a state of the political atmosphere immediately following his entrance, and, for a short time, continuous with his residence there. The atmospheric condition portends a storm about to burst upon “the blossom” and “vine of the earth,” not upon the Lord’s dwelling-place, as Dr. Boothroyd represents.

            “I will be still as dry heat impending lightning, as a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.” This is the quiescence of Jehovah’s Name-bearer, after beating down the Assyrian at eventide, by which he obtains forcible possession of Jerusalem. It is absolute quietude, or cessation from all hostilities, an armistice, as it were, obtaining from the descent to the Mount of Olives, and the commencement of the war between the King of Israel and the papal powers of the Roman West. The words “yet in my dwelling place I will be without fear,” are parenthetic and descriptive of the great King’s perfect security and fearlessness, in the midst of fierce and warlike nations, among whom he has introduced himself “as a thief,” with the intention of spoiling their governments of all their glory, honour, dominion, and wealth. As if he had said, “though I forbear immediately to follow up the victory I have gained in delivering Jerusalem from the Russo-Assyrian Gog, the enemy will be too confounded to rally his forces and lay siege to the city, for its recovery out of my hand. I shall be in it, and hold it without any ground of fear from a threatened renewal of the siege.”

            The “dwelling-place” of the fourth verse, is declared in the seventh verse to be “MOUNT ZION, the dwelling-place of the Name of Jehovah of armies.” This mount on which “the city where David dwelt” formerly stood, was selected by Jehovah himself, as the place of residence for his Name in all the Age to Come, termed “for ever.” The few testimonies following will prove this. “The city of David, which is Zion.” Zion, then is not in Sky-Kingdomia, but in Palestine. “Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” “When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory.” All people pretending to sanity admit that the Lord has not yet appeared in his glory since this prophecy was written. It is manifest, therefore, that Zion is in an unbuilded condition, that is, in ruins: and seeing that there are no ruins in Sky-Kingdomia, it follows again that the Zion in which the Lord delights, is not there. “The Lord hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest for ever; HERE will I dwell; for I have desired it. There will I make the horn (power) of David to bud.” “Zion shall be redeemed (from the power of the enemy) with judgment:” “and the redeemed shall come to Zion”—come, not go, to Zion. “Our heart is faint, and our eyes dim, because of the mountain of Zion which is desolate.” “The Lord shall yet comfort Zion.” “I set my King on Zion my holy hill,” “the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel forever.” “Then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed, when Jehovah of armies shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.” In view of these testimonies, how forcible and appropriate the exhortation to Israel, “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

            Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, at Zion, “still as dry heat impending lightning, as a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest,” is represented in the Apocalypse as “one like the Son of Man sitting upon a white cloud, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle”—Revelation 14: 14—or pruning hook. In this cloud scene he has but one crown. It pertains therefore to a time anterior to that in which, in chapter nineteen, he is seen “with many crowns upon his head.” The one crown is David’s, which he wears by inheritance; the “many,” are those he wins from the Beast and kings of the earth whom he overcomes in battle, when he “gathers the clusters of the vine of the earth,” and casts its grapes, fully ripe, “into the great wine-press of the wrath of God.” Jesus, the Redeemer, comes to Zion; at that crisis, “reaps the earth,” in the overthrow of Gog: then, as a dew-cloud, he rests in Zion, awaiting the full ripening of the vine clusters in the Roman West. This “perfecting of the fruit” is accomplished when the acceptance, or rejection, of the trumpet-proclamation to the land of o’ershadowing of wings, and to other lands, has divided them into adverse and friendly nations. As hostile, they are “the Goats;” as friendly, they are “the Sheep” of the Imperial Fold. This division effected, and the Royal Reaper, no longer still as dry heat and a cloud of dew, thrusts in his pruning-hook again, and having reaped the grape-clusters, treads them in the wine-press without the city, that is, beyond the limits of the land.

            “Before harvest there shall be a blossom,” liphnai kahtzir yihyeh nitzzah. This blossom is Gog, who aims at establishing a permanent dominion over the east and west. He obtains preadventual possession of Jerusalem, but is unable to retain it in subjection. His ambition blossoms forth with great promise, but he proves eventually unable to bring his schemes of conquest and dominion to perfection. Though laden with thick clay, his blossom will not become even a sour grape; for scarcely doth he appear as a flower in Jehovah’s vineyard, but he is cut off and blown away like chaff before the wind. The ten-horn or toe-kingdoms are not so. They continue to flourish on the earth’s vine, first as blossoms, then as sour grapes, and lastly, as grapes fully ripe, and fit for the wine-press without the city. They are trodden at vintage-time; but the pre-eminent blossom is cut off “before harvest” “as vine-shoots by pruning-hooks, and luxuriant twigs are lopped away.”

            “At that time.”—At evening time, and subsequently to the King of Israel’s victory over Gog, and over “the Beast, False Prophet, and Kings of the earth, and their armies.” The nations in arms being subdued under Israel—Psalm 47: 3, their hosts will no longer need to be detained in foreign parts. The time will have therefore come to give them rest from war; and to transport their victorious armies into their native land, that they may be disbanded there, and “settled after their old estates”—Ezekiel 36: 11. The steamships of the land of overshadowing of wings will be in great request for this service, which will be willingly and joyfully rendered. Hence, Israel’s eventide return to their fatherland, by this agency, is termed the diligent conveyance of “a present to Jehovah of armies.” Those of the scattered nation that are inaccessible to ships, will be brought home by the usual means of transportation by land. This present brought by sea and land to Mount Zion is termed by the prophet “an offering unto Jehovah out of all nations.” His words are, “They shall bring all your brethren, an offering unto Jehovah out of all nations upon horses, and chariots, and litter vehicles, and upon mules, and dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, as the children of Israel bring the offering in a clean vessel to the house of Jehovah”—Isaiah 66: 20.

            This “present” is not brought before the return of Jesus, the bearer of Jehovah’s name, from the right hand of power. It cannot be brought until he becomes “Jehovah of armies,” and is enthroned in Zion; for it is brought by strong nations as an offering to him dwelling in Zion. Were all Israel now sent back to Palestine by existing powers, their restoration would be no offered present to the Jehovah-name, because Zion is not yet the actual abode of Jehovah-Jesus. The “present” will be freely offered, because the offerers will have come to the recognition of the true nature of things. Jesus, whose prophetic name is “JEHOVAH our righteousness”—Jeremiah 23: 6, will have convinced them of his power, and right to the world’s allegiance, by his skill and prowess in arms. The south will no longer keep back, nor the north refuse to give up; for the Dragon, and the Beast, the False Prophet, and the Kings, with all the armies that now give effect to their wickedness, will have been destroyed; and all obstacles to the full return of Israel from the four winds of heaven, completely removed. “They shall bring my sons from far, saith God, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; every one that is called by my name: for I have created Israel for my glory”—Isaiah 43: 1, 6-7.

            But before the free-will offering of this present of Israel to their King by the nations no longer hostile, and before Zion is delivered of the man-child, Palestine will be occupied by a Jewish population, respectable for numbers, industry, and wealth. This is evident from the following testimony: “In the latter years, O Gog, thou shalt come into the land brought back from the sword and gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which were (asher-hahyu) for desolation continually: but is brought forth out of the nations, and they dwell safely all of them.” “Thou shalt come up against my people of Israel as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the nations may know me, when I shall be glorified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.” This proves a partial return before Gog’s invasion. The following text shows their prosperity in their land before he disturbs their peace. Jehovah addressing himself to Gog says, “Thou shalt think an evil thought; and shall 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, to take a spoil and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places now inhabited, and upon the people gathered out of the nations, who have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.” He accordingly invades Palestine with a mighty army; and that this invasion precedes the appearing of Jesus in Zion is clear from the consideration, that the invasion of God’s unoffending people is made the occasion of that appearing: as it is written, “And it shall be at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face * * * and there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel * * * and all the men that are upon the face of the land, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be hurled over, and the towers shall fall * * * and I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains; and I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many peoples that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I Jehovah—Ezekiel 38—am Jesus, bearing the name. And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee. Thou shalt fall on the mountains of Israel, and upon the open field: and I will give thee to the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured”—“a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that they may eat flesh and drink blood.” Thus falls the blossom from the vine. Sudden destruction at evening-tide descends in storm and tempest, and sweeps him as mountain-chaff or stubble before the blast. Thus Zion is redeemed with judgment. Prostrate under the heel of the Autocrat; and none of all her children to draw a sword for her deliverance; her voice is stifled by the throat-grip of the destroyer. She hath no strength to give birth to a deliverer; and nought seems to impend but the final extinction of all her hopes! But what doth the prophet hear at this crisis of her fate? “A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of Jehovah that rendereth recompense to his enemies!” “Jehovah roaring out of Zion, and uttering his voice from Jerusalem. And the heavens and the earth shall shake; but he will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. So shall ye know that I Jehovah your God am dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy; and there shall no strangers pass through her any more”—Joel 3: 16. Thus, “before Zion travailed she brought forth; before her pain came, she produced a male,” even a man of renown.

            Much more might be added upon the things brought out in this article, but we must forbear for the present. If the reader will make himself acquainted with what has been exhibited, it will help considerably to the understanding of a class of prophecies pertaining to the epoch of the Kingdom’s establishment whose import does not appear as yet to those even who are supposed to be considerably advanced in prophetic lore. New-translationists and hermeneutists will of course be grateful to us for the labour we have bestowed upon their particular branches; so that we may reasonably expect that when they favour the public with their forthcoming “improved version” our translation of this remarkable and interesting prophecy will figure upon the pages of their edition! Be this as it may, I have satisfaction of knowing that I have given an intelligible and scriptural exposition of a prophecy which has confessedly completely foiled the wisest, best, and learnedest of their scribes. This may be considered “ostentatiousness” by those who have too little assurance of faith to speak with certainty upon anything. Never mind. Paul gloried in his weakness; and so do we. If one so weak as our stupid self can make “the most difficult passage of Isaiah” so intelligible and plain, how blind must they be, who with all their classical, theological, hermeneutic, erudition, and “logic,” can give no better sense to this portion of the word than the translators so often named in this! So true is it, that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.” This is his wisdom; and “wisdom is justified of all her children,” when the wisdom of the world’s wise ones shall be shown to all nations to have been nothing more than “vanity and vexation of spirit.”

EDITOR.

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