ly the best guess that has been yet made, but yet it is not quite satisfactory.

If the word be taken as a verb, the passage may be thus rendered,

"For destroyed is the greave of the greaved warrior, with its

rattling noise,

And the garment rolled in blood:

And shall be for burning-fuel for the fire."

-" with its rattling noise." So Bishop Stock.

Verse 6.

"The mighty God;" rather, "God, the mighty Man."

Verse 7. "Of the increase of his government"literally, "[His] government is for increase;" i. e. it shall perpetually increase. "Propagabit latè imperium suum." Houbigant.

66 upon the throne." I think Houbigant's con

; ועל על כסא jecture not improbable. He would read ,להבין

“He shall ascend the throne." The verb pan, as Houbigant observes, wants a preceding verb to govern it.

Chap. ix, 8,—x, 4. A prophecy against the ten tribes.

8. "The Lord sent a word into Jacob;" rather, with Bishop Lowth, "Jehovah hath sent a word [i. e. an oracular word, a prophecy] against Jacob."

VOL. II.

E

This oracular word I take to be the denunciations of judgment upon the disobedience of the Jewish race uttered by Moses, and preserved in the book of Deuteronomy. These judgments, at the time when Isaiah delivered this prophecy, were lighting upon Israel; they were then about to take effect upon that branch of the Jewish nation which consisted of the ten tribes.

Verse 9. "And all the people shall know”— Houbigant and Bishop Lowth propose different emendations of the verb ". I am persuaded no emendation is necessary. The verb y is properly to know by sensation, to feel, perceive, experience. The final in this place I take, not for the formative of the third person plural, but for the pronominaļ

suffix rehearsing the noun

7, (see verse 13), which

noun I take to be also the antecedent of the suffix

in 17. And I would render the passage thus,

"And this people shall feel it, the whole of it,

Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria,

While they say, in pride and arrogance of heart," &c.

The words "Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria" are expositive of "this people." This people, the ten tribes, shall feel the full effect and completion of these antient denuntiations of wrath, at the

very time that they are the most swoln with notions of their own greatness and national strength.

Verse 11. " set up the adversaries of Rezin against him;" i. e. against Rezin. There is no necessity for the change of into ", proposed by Houbigant, and adopted by Bishop Lowth. The Prophet, in this verse, foretells the overthrow of Rezin, the ally of the king of Israel; and in the next, the calamities of the kingdom of Israel itself. The mention of the Syrian, at the beginning of the next verse, among the devourers of Israel, has led expositors to imagine that it was against Israel that the, or, of Rezin were to be set up; and, accordingly, to refer the pronominal suffix in “y, not to, which immediately precedes it, but to

, in the 8th verse. But how were the princes of Rezin, if we adopt the proposed emendation, for %, how were they set up, or excited, as Bishop Lowth has it, against Israel? In this manner, says Mr White: The Assyrian, after his conquest of Rezin, came upon the Israelites "with a mixed army of his own national troops, and those of the vanquished Syrians." But of these vanquished Syrians, which Mr White has enlisted for Tiglathpileser in his war against the kingdom of Israel, the

sacred history gives a different account. They were carried away captives, and settled in Kir; 2 Kings xvi, 9. But the name of Aram was not peculiar to Syria Damascena, which was Rezin's kingdom, but common to that country with Mesopotamia and Assyria. "The Syrians before" therefore, or, "the Syrians to the east," were Syrians distinct from Rezin's subjects, and were his enemies.

-" and join his enemies together;" rather, "and protect his enemies;" or, " and set on his enemies." ”, “ against him,” being understood, from the former clause. Or, literally, "and he will anoint his enemies ;” i. e. anoint them for the battle, a figure taken from the antient custom of anointing the naked athletes.

Verse 12. "The Syrians" See note on the preceding verse.

-

Verse 13. " neither do they seek the Lord of ⚫ hosts;" rather, "and the Jehovah of hosts they seek him not." In the preceding clause, the collective noun Dy is joined with the singular verb ; therefore I take the verb in this clause, which has the same subject, to be singular, and the final to be the pronominal suffix rehearsing

verse 9.

. See

Verse 17. " for every one is a hypocrite." The word

seems rather to render a libertine' than

' a hypocrite.' Pollution is the radical idea of the word.

Verse 18. "For wickedness," &c. This passage seems to resemble some of Homer's similes, where the poet's imagination for a moment drops the principal object, to dwell upon the particulars of the picture which the image presents. I render the whole verse thus,

"For impiety makes consumption like a fire,

Which devoureth the brier and the bramble,

When it is kindled in the thicket of the forest,

And the surges of smoke lift themselves proudly aloft." "makes consumption," makes a clear riddance. Such is the precise meaning of the word ".

-"lift themselves proudly aloft." N. Stateliness of motion seems contained in the idea of the word, which in the Syriac signifies a cock, from his strutting gait.

Verse 19." is the land darkened;" rather, "wasted in smoke." The verb ny seems to denote the dissipation of a solid substance in smoke by the action of an intense fire. See Parkhurst's Lexicon, and Barker. Mr Barker thinks the Greek