grammarians call it, with the verb, tzebe, to swell, swell up, or be blown up, and so denotes the goat or deer, which they say is a turgid swelling creature. This application is founded on the interchanging of the two final letters, & aleph or a, and

he or e, in the several roots where they are found; which is yet far from being certain. For in turning over the Lexicons, we shall scarce meet with an instance where this absolutely holds; but, on the other hand, shall find numbers where these two final letters make a material difference; as NP, quena, to be jealous, and P, quene, to purchase;

metza, to find, and, metze, to squeeze; ~, shena, to hate, and, shenc, to change, with sundry more, where critics have observed that the translations have lost the sense sometimes by confounding the finals. For usage makes a rule of it, that tho' the final he, when mutable, which is not always, may be, and is turned into jod, or vau, or tau, in the various deflections, or lost altogether; yet it is never changed into & aleph, which, when final, is as immutable a radical as any of the eleven that are never serviles; and which, though in the pointed grammars, it be called quiescent, and a foolish pother made about a paradigma of it accordingly through all the forms, yet still appears, and keeps its place without any transmutation or omission whatever. Upon this rule, so invariably established, and which I have been at all possible pains to look into, I cannot allow Y, tzeba, or, tzebe, to be so similar as to interchange senses, or lend deHh2 rivations

rivations to one another. So that tho' tzebi, or, tzebie, which I find to be a creature of the deer genus, may by rule come from, tzebe, to swell or be prominent, it will not follow, either by rule or necessity of construction, that our word tzebauth, coming so naturally from tzeba, an entirely different root, should signify any such creature. And if there must be such a community of signification between tzeba and tzebe, as that tzeba may lend a derivative to the signification of tzebe, I would wish to know why tzebe is not so friendly on the other hand, as sometimes to give some of its known and regular derivatives to the use of our word tzebauth, in one or other of the many positions in which it occurs, which we do not find that it has ever done; and the want of which on that side, I take to be a strong exception to the interchanging scheme, upon which this ungrammatical rendering

of tzebauth is founded.

Let us now see how usage stands with this word : And here I have in general observed, that for the most part, except in Jerem. iii. 19. which shall be considered afterwards, it is applied either to the people of Israel, or to Jehovah. The first time we find it, Jehovah takes it to himself', 'I will bring forth, tzebauthi, my armies, my people,' &c. In another place, he applies it to the people,

* Exod. vii. 4.

,צבאותיכם.

, tzebauthikem, your armies'.

And, the

כל צבאות יהוה historian more particularly calls them

occurs.

kol tzebauth Jehova, all the hosts of the Lord, πασα η δυναμις Κυρι8, the whole power of the Lord, LXX. One should think that this mode of expression so early met with, and at such an important juncture, could not miss to lead to the meaning of the title Lord of hosts, since, if the people of Israel were the hosts of the Lord, it must follow that he is Lord of hosts, from his peculiar connexion with them. The tzebauth Jehovah here, cannot mean the hosts of heaven and earth: Why then should • Jehovah tzebauth' mean the Lord of these hosts? I need not quote the many places where this title The Psalms, Prophets, and historical parts of scripture are full of it; all tending to shew that it signified something, in which these writers thought themselves intimately concerned. The 2d and 10th chapters of the book of Numbers are abundantly sufficient to shew us, who and what these tzebauth, hosts, were. The marshalling of the people of Israel, the then church, into four battalions, consisting each of three tribes under their respective princes, and forming a hollow square to enclose the Tabernacle and Sanctum Sanctorum, where was the presence (the scripture calls it the residence or dwelling) of their God, as commanded and directed by Jehovah himself, appears to me an irrefragable demonstration in what it is, that this so emi

nent

1 Exod. xii. 17.

* Exod. xii. 41.

nent Old-Testament title originated. Had it meant, as is commonly said, Jehovah's universal dominion over all his works, it is more than presumable that some of the faithful, prior to this æra, in their addresses to him, or acknowledgements of him, would have made use of it, especially when their subject led to it; as for instance, in the history of Abraham', where we find a priest of the most high God, the al oliun, (who, in that character, certainly well knew how to have expressed Jehovah's universal sovereignty) calling him Possessor of Heaven and Earth.' From this appellation out of that mouth, and from the silence of these early times about Lord of hosts,' (negative as the argument is), I have no difficulty to conclude, that 'Lord of Hosts' was not a title of Deity then; and that, when it became so, it was not in that view which has been so long and so generally supposed. The first time we meet with it, is after the tabernacle with the Divine Presence had been set up in Shiloh, where we are told that Elkanah went up to worship, and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh: And,3 a little after it is said, Hannah vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of Hosts,' &c. In both which places, it is observable that the LXX. retain the original word for hosts in Greek characters; and in Hannah's prayer, by a strange periphrasis and multiplicity of

6

names, they render it, Adwva, Kupis Eλwe caßaw, Adonai, Kyrie Eloe sabaoth. Again we find it more descriptively' applied, where it is said that the

people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from 'thence the Arun berith, the ark of the covenant of 'the Lord of hosts, who inhabiteth the cherubim,' where the LXX. render it Kup duvaμswy, Lord of

powers. It is likewise to be taken notice of, how the LXX's translation varies the rendering of this word. In Isaiah it always keeps the original word Sabaoth, as two of our New-Testament writers, quoting Isaiah by that translation, do. Through the other prophets where the word occurs, they make it παντοκρατωρ, Almighty. In the Psalms, and some other detached places, it is duvaμswv, of powers. How to account for this diversity, whether by supposing that this translation has been the work of different hands, and at different times, or that the translators, whoever they were, either had not perfectly understood, or had not been willing fully to discover the peculiar import of this title, is neither material in itself, nor to my purpose. The most common rendering we find is Kug duvaμewy, adopted universally by the Vulgate, Dominus exercituum, Lord of armies: And that we may not think ourselves obliged to apply the Greek word duvaμswv, which properly signifies 'powers,' to the powers or hosts of heaven and earth, let it be remembered, that in the 2d chapter of Numbers, they

call

I

■ Sam, iv.

4.

2 Rom. ix. 39. and St James v. 4.