call every particular host by this word Suvas; the host, duvaμs of Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, &c. and in ver. 32. throughout their hosts,' Tas duvaμson, plural, which certainly belongs to the people of Israel, and so bids fair to point out to us what the men if they were all the same men, meant by duvaμew), hosts, when they joined it to Kug Lord. Let it be likewise observed, to add what force it can to this confined application, that tho', while the worship of Jehovah in the tabernacle and temple continued, the sacred writers currently make use of this title, and for the most part in their speeches and addresses to the people of God, yet in the two, who wrote under the captivity, when there was no instituted place of worship, Ezekiel and Daniel, we meet with no such appellation. Whereas no sooner is the building of the second temple set about, after the restoration, but we find the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, affectedly, as it were, falling into the old style again. Say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto ⚫ you, saith the Lord of hosts' three times we see in one short verse, and designedly, we may believe, by such emphatic repetition, to awaken the people's attention, and to comfort their minds with the remembrance of that once well understood, but long disused designation. I pay no regard to any objection against this observation that may be See Hag. i. 5. 7. and ii. 6, 7, 8, 9. and Zech. i. 3. drawn ה drawn from the Talmudic fancy (which they build on the imaginary want of the letter he, the fifth of the Hebrew alphabet, in one of the words of Hag. i. 8.) of the five deficients in the second temple, among which the cherubic presence, which I lay so much stress upon, was one; when, besides the authority of these prophets using the old language, and where it is noticeable, that in the verse quoted from Zechariah, the LXX. have it twice Kugi duvaμiewv, I have the confession of these Talmudists themselves, that the cherubic presence was the very marrow of their worship, and without which, it could not be denominated worship. Certainly Jehovah was the Lord of heaven and earth all the time, both when there was a temple, and when there was none. But it seems he was not Jehovah sabaoth, Lord of hosts, till, and only when, there was a place of his own chusing for him to dwell and rëside in, and for the 'Sabaoth' the duvajes, the hosts of Israel, his people, his church,, letzeba, to repair to, and assemble in, according to the old instituted and invariable prescription", • Three times in the year shall all thy males' (Heb. 175, zakurka, thy memorialists, according to the numeration of the people in the Book of Numbers) ' appear before the Lord thy God, in the place which he shall choose,' &c. Indeed, without this particular view, there are a great many passages, in the Psalms especially, the meaning of which cannot be VOL. II. I i clearly * Deut. xvi. 15. clearly perceived. I shall instance only in one', 'O Shepherd of Israel, thou who inhabitest the ' cherubim-before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Ma'nasseh, stir up thy strength,' (, gabrotheca, thy manhood), and come and save us.' It will be difficult, I suspect, for the ablest expositors to account for this speciality of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, or to discover the true reason of these three being so particularized in this prayer to the Shepherd of Israel, unless by the method which I have been endeavouring to point out, as the only clear way of solving this difficulty. According to that marshalling order, to which I have referred, the camp, as it is called, of Judah, with his two conjuncts, Issachar and Zebulun, pitched on the east side before the tabernacle and sanctuary; on the right hand, or south, were Reuben, Simeon and Gad; on the left, or north, were Dan, Asher, and Naphtali; and to the westward, immediately behind the Sanctum Sanctorum, where the cherubim with their Divine Residenter were, was the camp of Ephraim, with his two associates, Benjamin and Manasseh. So Jehovah, inhabiting the cherubim, was, by his position, literally and locally before (, lepani, Heb. vario, LXX. coram, Lat. over against) these three. metaphor or allegory here. εναντιού, There is no necessity for stood by the church of those days. This was one of their SHEPHERD's characters, and in this light he is I. Psalm lxxx. I, 2. is immediately addressed', under the significant and parallel title, Lord God of hosts, the hosts among whom his residence was. By this account we see, that the inhabitant of the cherubim was Jehovah: And what Jehovah, or, to speak more properly, and in christian style, What person in Jehovah it was, who, by his cherubical position in the camp of Israel, the then church, was the Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of, or in, their hosts, we shall readily come to the knowledge of, by examining and comparing Scripture with itself. We have a joyful declaration of the old church to this purpose', 'The Lord of hosts is with us;' way, Immanu, pɛ nw, LXX. nobiscum Lat. not μɛdo ' on our side,' but with us, among us, in our company, one of us. The prophet. Isaiah, describing the child that was to be born of the virgin, tells us he was to be called, Immanu-al; al, ‘God' immanu, as in the Psalm, with us.' And how this was to be brought about, we may learn from the same prophet, speaking of a promised child, who was to be called, among other names, 78, al gibbur, the passive of gabar, which signifies vir, man, and in that sense, strong, mighty, manly. By being gibbur, (viratus, made man), this Al, God, was to be Immanu, with us; and to apply all to my present 4 Ii2 אל גבור 1 Psalm 1xxx. 4. 7. 14. 19. 2 Psalm xlvi. 7. II. 3 Isa. vii. 14.-explained by the fulfilment, St. Matth. i. 23. present view, the prophet sums up his pompous account of this wonderful child with this explanatory conclusion, The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.' Long after Isaiah's days, the prophet Zechariah has a prediction (which we are taught by the highest authority how to apply *) much in the same language with Isaiah 3, Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the MAN (gabar, as above) that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts.. My fellow,' y, immathi, formed from 2, cum, with, as above noticed; my joined one,' cohærentem mihi, as Jerom and the Vulgate have it, 'adhering, sticking to me.' And who could the Lord of hosts, who says this of himself, be, but the Lord of hosts immanu, with us, the A, God, with us, the Al, who took the gabar, man, to be his fellow, and so became the Al-gibbur, the God-man, God manifested in the flesh*? This key of Zecha, riah's, as put into our hands by our blessed Lord himself, will open up to us sundry dark passages in the Psalms, which cannot be well scen through without it. It will discover to us what the import is of that petition from the church to the Lord of hosts, Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the Son of man whom thou madest strong for thine own self";' a prayer to the Deity concerning the humanity in the same person, with Psalm 1xix. 9. referred to in St John ii. 17. 2 St Matth. xxvi. 31. St Mark xiv. 27. 4 1 Tim. iii. 16, what 3. Zech. xiii, 7. |
