of its barren sabbatism is drawing speedily to a close, that it shall be redeemed from its dreary depopulation, and shall bear the shame of the heathen no more. "Behold, I am for you, and I will turn you, and ye shall be tilled and sown. And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it; and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded; and I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bear fruit; and I will settle you after your old estates, and I will do better unto you than at your beginnings; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Yea, I will cause men to walk upon you, even my people Israel; and they shall possess thee, and thou shalt be their inheritance, and thou shalt no more thenceforth bereave them of men.”

This is no other than the definite form of the purposed fulfilment of the promise elsewhere recorded, "And I will remember the land;" and while, on the one hand, the language is of such a nature as absolutely to forbid any kind of spiritualizing interpretation, so, on the other, the obvious purport of several of the clauses goes to ascertain the time of the accomplishment as utterly incompatible with that of the literal return from Babylon under the decree of Cyrus. The announcements bear nothing more unequivocally on their face, than that this re-establishment in the land of Canaan shall be final and permanent. It shall be succeeded by no subsequent rooting out and dispersion; "Thus saith the Lord God, Because they say unto you, Thou land devourest up men, and hast bereaved thy nations; therefore thou shalt devour men no more, neither bereave thy nations any more, saith the Lord God. Neither will I cause men to hear in thee the shame of the heathen any more, neither shalt thou bear the reproach of the people any more, neither shalt thou cause thy nations to fall any more, saith the Lord God." We do not see how any thing can be more express than this. If words have meaning, it certainly assures us that the return predicted is not to be followed by disasters to the inhabitants such as the land had witnessed for ages before. Yet what fact is more notorious than that subsequent to the return from Babylon the land has again been emptied of its occupants-that they have wandered as strangers in every clime-and that the hostile hoof of Arabian and Turkish coursers has bruised the flowerets of Esdraelon

and trampled in the dust the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley? We are, therefore, as we conceive, inevitably shut up to that construction of the prophecy which makes its fulfilment still future. That land of hallowed memories is yet to receive again its ancient tenants, and to yield its teeming riches to the old age of the same people whose infancy was nurtured upon its maternal bosom. The tears of a profound and heart-stricken penitence are yet to mingle with the dews of Hermon in fertilizing its barren vales and its deserted hill-tops. The olive and the vine shall again. spread their honors over the mountains once delectable, but now desolate, the corn shall yet laugh in the valleys where the prowling Bedouin pitches his transient tent-and joyous groups of children, the descendants of patriarch fathers, shall renew their evening sports in the streets of crowded cities, where now the ruinous heaps tell only of a grandeur that has passed away.

It is with the prophetic intimations of these events that the XXXVIth chapter is occupied, and the ensuing chapter, which we propose to illustrate, is to be viewed in the closest relation with that which precedes. Both constitute in fact one extended series of predictions, taking hold of the very period of time to which we have now arrived. The former portion announces the fact of the restoration, the latter the manner and means of it. To determine the era of the one, is to determine that of the other. This is to be borne distinctly in mind in every stage of the ensuing exposition. Without assuming to fix with absolute precision the day or the year which the counsels of Providence may have assigned to the fulfilment, we are still confident that we incur no hazard in saying, that the most accurate researches in prophetic chronology, as well as the pregnant signs of the times, afford abundant warrant for the belief, that we are now just upon the borders of that sublime crisis in Providence of which the restoration of the Jews to Syria, and their ingathering into the church, is to be one of the prominent features.

Under the full persuasion that this event is announced in the chapter before us, I propose to enter upon the minute exposition of the vision with which it opens. My design in this, is to endeavor to disclose, from the purport of the prophecy, the probable course of Providence in relation to the conversion and restoration of the

Jews. This twofold order of events forms the subject of the present emblematic prediction. They are not indeed very studiously discriminated in the imagery employed, and I have accordingly, in the course of the ensuing exposition, spoken of them in terms that do not perhaps very accurately distinguish the one from the other. They are evidently designed, by the Spirit of inspiration, to be viewed in very intimate relation with each other, though it cannot be doubted that, in the order of occurrence, the return to Palestine will, as to the bulk of the nation, precede their ingrafting into Christ. If I have not mistaken the genuine drift of this prediction, it details more strikingly and precisely the order of events which is to usher in the grand result, than the Christian world have for the most part supposed; and if the progress of the commentary shall suggest new and interesting views of duty on the part of Christians, in reference to this desired consummation, the object will at once have approved itself abundantly worthy of all the labor expended upon it.

The chapter consists of two distinct visions, the first respecting the dry-bones in the valley, the other respecting the junction of the two sticks into one, indicating the union of the two houses of Judah and Israel after their return to their own land. It is to the consideration of the first of these that the following pages are devoted. The burden of this vision is so strictly defined by Jehovah himself, as intended to set forth, in a figurative way, the restoration of Israel from their long dispersion and captivity, from their political degradation and moral death, that I have not deemed it expedient to dwell upon those spiritual or christianized applications of it, which have been usual in all ages. The imagery employed undoubtedly possesses a striking inherent adaptedness to illustrate certain prominent features in the native condition of man, and to set off with signal effect the display of that omnipotent grace which can alone triumph over the deadness of the sinner's heart, and awake him to the appropriate functions of spiritual life. We deem it entirely according to the analogy of the sacred writers themselves to make such an accommodated use of the striking symbolical scenery of Scripture, while at the same time it cannot be doubted, that the tendency is to cause the interpreter to lose sight of the primary drift of such representations, and to make that sense sub

ordinate which is in truth principal and paramount.

So it cannot be questioned that many of the symbolic shadows of the Apocalypse are often employed in references foreign to the original scope of the inditing Spirit, although the doctrinal positions which they are brought to establish may be in themselves true. Thus, for instance, when the words-" the smoke of their torment ascendeth forever," -are understood of the punishment of the wicked in hell, although this may be in itself the fact, yet it is certain that this is not the primary purport of the passage, which alludes to the doom, not of the lost portion of the race at large in another world, but of a certain antichristian power in this. Other instances of a kindred character might easily be cited.

I trust, then, that it will not be attributed to any overlooking or disesteem of this mode of interpretation, that I have seen fit to confine myself exclusively to what the Holy Spirit has himself designated as the true meant design of the present mystic procedure. "Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel," &c. This declaration of the burden of the vision is too unequivocal to allow of doubt respecting it. By it every just exegesis must necessarily be governed. The only question of which the matter can admit is, in respect to the time when the predicted restoration is to be understood as taking place; whether it was the return from Babylon, or a similar event yet future. On this head we have adduced the grounds of our belief in a preceding paragraph. We are, for ourselves, satisfied of the futurity of the accomplishments here shadowed forth, although persuaded that the period is at hand when their incipiency is to be anticipated; and we look upon this and every kindred attempt at the thoroughgoing exposition of this class of prophecies, as themselves among the significant indicia of their speedy fulfilment. It will be seen, if our ensuing exposition is built upon good grounds, that whoever rightly unfolds the prophecies respecting the restoration of Israel, is in fact prophesying over the dry bones of the valley of vision.

It is obvious that in this, as in every other region of biblical inquiry, our conclusions are of no value except so far as they are sustained by a fair and unimpeachable exegesis of the sense of the original. I shall therefore deem no apology necessary for the array of the Hebrew text, with that of several of the ancient versions at the head of my expositions. The Scriptural argument. which I design to present, frequently rests, in some of its important points, on the just application of single words and phrases, and this can seldom be compassed without exhibiting the usus loquendi of the sacred writers in their own language. Adequate translations, however, accompanying the originals, will put the mere English reader nearly on a level with the learned Hebrician as to advantage in understanding the force of terms.

For the sake of my less literate readers I may observe in regard to these versions, that the Greek is that of the Septuagint or Seventy, so called from its being said to have been accomplished by seventy individuals appointed by Ptolemy, King of Egypt, for the purpose. The word Targum signifies interpretation. The Targum of Jonathan is an ancient paraphrase made in the Chaldee language by a person of that name, and published, together with the Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic, in the Polyglot Bible of Walton. It is very free, but throws occasionally important light upon the meaning of the prophets, especially by translating the language of symbols into a simple and more literal diction. Of this I have deemed it sufficient to give an exact rendering, without inserting the original.The Vulgate is the usual designation of the Latin version of Jerome.