in the former part of our citation coincides with another representation occurring in the New Testament, in a manner so definite and striking, that the latter cannot but be regarded as designedly alluding to the former. Each is the scenery of a prophetic vision; each is composed of the same symbols; and the significancy of each plainly points to the same characters of dignity, holiness, wisdom, and all-pervading and irresistible power. It is needless to say of whom the New Testament passage is a description:-" I turned and sawone like to a son of man; enrobed down to the feet; and girded around the breasts with a girdle of gold. His head and his hairs were white as white wool, as snow; and his eyes as a flame of fire; and his feet [-the supporters of his throne?*] like to fine brass, as if they glowed in a furnace."†

2. Though the word translated "he was brought near," does not necessarily imply more than a near approach; yet it may be justly extended to the expression of a personal union. Its radical idea is that of very close contact; and its different forms are applied to many instances of conjunction, indwelling, and union, the most close and intimate that exist among men. §

*

* Τράπεζαν ἡμῖν φέρε τρεῖς πόδας ἔχουσαν. Aristoph. Pedem et nostrum dicimus et lecti, &c. Seneca de Benef. lib. ii. § 34.

§ For instance, Gen. xxv. 22. Is. viii. 3. Lev. i. 13. Ps. v. 9. xlix. 11.

Upon these grounds it is proposed as a fair and rational interpretation of the whole passage, to view it as declaring, in the symbolical language of prophecy, an assumption of the frail and humble nature of a child of man into an absolute union with the Great ETERNAL; and that this union is the basis of the Messiah's office as the Sovereign and Saviour of the world.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

TO

SECT. XXVI.

Note [A] p. 314.

.ANCIENT OF DAYS עתיק יומין

The adjective denotes not only old, but permanent, undiminished, unaltered: see Schultens in Job. xxi. 7. et in Prov. viii. 18. and Eichhorn in Simonis Lex. Perhaps the epithet would be more adequately rendered by the single expression, THE IMMORTAL.- -SON OF MAN, WIN, the name appropriated to imply the frailty, sorrows, and mortality of human nature, and thus contradistinguished from 78 and www.mapn literally, they brought him near: but it is a well known idiom of the Hebrew and its cognate languages to use the third person, either singular or plural, no nominative being expressed or intimated, in an impersonal or indefinite sense. This idiom, indeed, is by no means confined to the Hebraic dialects. See the remarks on Jer. xxiii. 6.

Note [B] p. 314.

The Rabbinical commentators without exception appear to have acknowledged this application. Carpzovius, in his Dissertation on this passage (ap. Menthenii Thesaurum, tom. i.) has made an ample collection of their testimonies. The following are a specimen. "The interpreters explain the words, As a son of man, of the King Messiah, as being the one man who shall come to judgment and to supplicate for his people." Abrabenel, Comm. in loc. This is the Messiah, our Righteousness, who shall draw near into the presence of God." Joseph ben Jarchi, ed. Const. l'Empereur.

SECT. XXVII.

SOVEREIGN, SHEPHERD, RESTORER, HE WHOSE ACTINGS HAVE BEEN FROM ETERNITY.

Micah v. 1-4.

1. And thou, Bethlehem of Ephratah,

[Too] little to be among the clans of Judah;

[Yet] from thee shall [one] come forth in my presence, to be Sovereign in Israel,

Even he whose comings forth are from eternity, from the days

of the everlasting period.

5. Surely [God] will renounce them till the time that she who is pregnant shall bear,

And the remnant of his brethren shall return with the sons of

Israel.

Even he shall stand, and shall be the Shepherd, in the strength of Jehovah ;

In the exaltation of the name of Jehovah his God:

And they shall dwell in quietness, because now shall he be great to the ends of the earth,

10. And he shall be the Restorer.*

THIS remarkable passage possesses a common character with many others in the prophecies; that it makes the sufferings and deliverances of the Jews from their Assyrian and other enemies,

* See Note [A] at the end of this Section.

occasions of rising to animated descriptions of the Messiah, and the spiritual happiness of his reign. This character particularly belongs to the contemporary prophets Isaiah and Micah. Thus the connection and the terms of this passage lead to its application to the Restorer and Saviour of mankind; and ill comport with the efforts of those who represent it as a description of Zerubbabel, or of some other chieftain of Judah on the return from Babylon. The express reference to the Messiah is affirmed in the Chaldee Targum,* and in the commencement of the Gospel of Matthew: and those who do not receive as authentic the portion in which the reference is made, acknowledge its very high antiquity, and will admit it as evidence that the Jewish nation generally regarded this prophecy as the Targumist explains it.

Besides the characters of supreme power employed for the most benevolent purposes, which this passage, in common with many others, attributes to the Messiah; we find a local and temporal

* "And thou, Bethlehem of Ephrata, little art thou, to be reckoned among the clans of the house of Judah; out of thee shall proceed in my presence the Messiah, to exercise sovereignty over Israel; whose name has been called from eternity, from the days of the everlasting period. Targ. Jon." Thou art little; but out of thee shall come forth to me the King Messiah, of whom also the words treat, The stone which the builders rejected," &c. Jarchi. The same application is made by Kimchi and

Abrabanel.