If thou remove from the midst of thee the yoke,

Him that putteth forth the finger to iniquity,
And speaketh vanity.

But, without any emendation, the passage is well rendered by Bishop Lowth:

The pointing of the finger, and the injurious speech.

Perhaps it might be better thus:

Him that pointeth the finger, and speaketh injurious speech.

-"protendere digitum infami digito,' ut Persius loquitur, denotare viros probos, et eorum simplicitati illudere-loqui vanitatem fratrem otiosis ac temerariis dictis-objicere aliorum odio et invidiæ." Vitringa ad locum. ·

Verse 10. "And if thou draw out thy soul;" rather, "And if thou impart of thine own subsistence, or sustenance."

Verse 11.-" make fat thy bones."

-"addet

que ossibus tuis alacritatem." The expression in the original is rather harsh than obscure, though Archbishop Secker and Bishop Lowth think the verb requires emendation. Perhaps ry, which is found in three MSS. (see Bishop Lowth), is to be preferred to sy. With this alteration, without any change of the verb, the sense may be 'expediet [tibi] robur tuum;' shall give thee the free use of thy strength.'

is properly to disengage, to free from restraint

or incumbrance.

12 And of thee shall be built the antient ruins,

Thou shalt raise up foundations for many generations;

And thou shalt be called a restorer of the broken wall,

Of settlements of rest.

-"the antient ruins."

"Edificare desolata

a longo, stylo mystico nostri prophetæ, est populos et gentes, alienatas a Dei cognitione et communione, imbuere notitiâ veræ religionis; vel corruptâ religione usas ad veram perducere." Vitringa in Is. vol. ii, 775, 2. I am mistaken if in this verse it is not intimated that the church of the Gentiles perfectly reformed shall be the instrument of the final conversion of the Jews.

-" of settlements;" so I render, from the sense of the verb in the Chaldee dialect, to dwell, settle.'

Verse 13. "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath," &c. See Neh. xiii, 15—22.

CHAP. LIX.

This fifty-ninth chapter is closely connected with the preceding. That was closed with a promise of prosperity to the church, upon the condition of her

repentance and perfect reformation. This leads the prophet to vindicate the ways of God in suffering his church to be exposed to the scorn and oppression of the adversaries of religion for so many ages previous to the season of the promised mercy. This is the subject of the first eight verses of this chapter, in which the prophet argues that God's apparent disregard of the complaints of his people, under the sufferings they were to endure, proceeded not from any want of power in him to give them redress, nor from any mutability in his purposes, but from the enormity of their own corruptions. The seven verses following the eighth, contain a pathetic confession in the person of the repenting rulers of the church. This introduces the promise of deliverance by the Messiah in person. He is to rescue his church from persecution, to spread the fear of the Lord from the west to the east, and at last to turn away transgression from Jacob in the natural Israel. And the developement and amplification of these promises, in a speech (or rather an ode) of congratulation, in which the prophet salutes Zion, make the whole sixtieth chapter.

Verse 2." his face." For, read 5, with

6

the LXX Alexandrine, Vulgate, Houbigant, and Bishop Lowth.

4 No one calleth for justice,

And nothing is judged with truth.

they trust

and bring forth"- For

בטוח

and 7, Houbigant would read, with the LXX and Vulgate, and . The latter correction is certainly necessary. But the word, I think may be taken as a substantive; or rather, as the infinitive of the verb used for the noun substantive.

The general confidence is in vanity and idle speech,

They have conceived mischief, and brought forth iniquity. Vanity and idle speech may denote the sophisms of irreligious philosophy, and the quibbles of the scribes

and Pharisees, and the later rabbis, in their expositions of the Divine Law, or the worse quibbles of modern infidels.

Verse 5.-" and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper;" rather, " and that which is sitten upon is hatched a viper." is properly to squeeze, or confine; thence applied to eggs to sit upon,' because eggs are sqeezed and confined by incubation. Vitringa objects to this interpretation, that the viper is viviparous; but this objection is of little weight, since the allusion is not to the young of the

viper produced in the ordinary course of nature, but to young vipers preternaturally issuing from eggs of another species; which eggs have been previously mentioned as hatched, or at least produced from the body of the animal, in whichever sense the verb wp be taken.

Verses 5, 6. -" cockatrice eggs-spider's webs." "Utrumque emblema eodem tendit, et clarissime ante oculos ponit, profana philosophemata, fœtus cogitationum et meditationum animi, subtiliter et artificiose contexta ex variâ cogitationum serie, subinde per modum longioris ratiocinationis ex hypothesibus assumptis deducta, et ad formam demonstrationis subtiliter composita, quæ occultant pestilens quid, quod intus latet et incantos fallit." Vitringa in Is. vol. ii, p. 783, 2. An excellent description of infidel argumentation. Read Collins, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Hume, Helvetius, Rousseau, Gibbon, Priestley, Lindsay, Payne, and many others, and you will find an accomplishment, and yet perhaps not the whole accomplishment, of this text.

For,

Verse 8." therein." For , read, with the LXX, Vulgate, Houbigant, and Bishop Lowth, J. Verse 9. -" for brightness, but we walk in darkness;" rather, "in the midst of brightness we walk