feareth no God, shall, with many nations at his steps, pass over, and overflow, and plant the tabernacle of his palaces in the glorious holy mountain; and there shall he come to his end, and none shall help him for Michael, the great Prince, shall stand up for the Jewish people; and there shall be between these great potentates, the head of Infidelity leading the nations called Christian, and the Head of the Jews, such direful conflicts as never hath been heard of, nor ever shall be upon the earth again. Thus shall God set unbelief against unbelief in battle, the infidels of the Old Testament against the infidels of the New Testament, both deeming themselves to be believers; and fearful will the conflict be: but it will end in the deliverance of the Jews and of Jerusalem, because the set time to favour Zion is come. And this, which is contained in all the Prophets, as about to be accomplished against the day of Zion's restoration, is the event described in the two verses before us, which are more simple in the general idea than in the details.

The Assyrian, whoever he be, the last enemy of God's people, the wilful king of Daniel (ch. xi.), including also, perhaps, the Gog of Ezekiel, being come into the holy land, doth prevail so mightily as to tread in the palaces of the King, and to trample the glory of the kingdom under foot. "He shall ascend, and come like a storm; he shall be like a cloud to cover the land "(Ezek. xxxviii.) "Jerusalem shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city" (Zech. xiv. 2). Then it is that "this Man shall be the peace;" for, according to the same prophet, "then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle and his feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives....and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee." From this act of strong interference for his people, and judgment upon their enemies, shall come peace, as it is written in the xlvith Psalm, 8-10: "Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth: he maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth." And so also in the ixth chapter of Zechariah, the King of Zion doth in like manner bring about peace: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle-bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to

the ends of the earth." These illustrations of the words "this Man shall be the peace," might be extended a hundred fold; and do all predict that the children of Israel will never find rest until He come to them" whose rest shall be glory;" and until they confess Him as the peace "who hath made both one, having broken down the middle wall of partition which was between us." So long as that nation acknowledge not Jesus, they must be tossed by the waves of anarchy and oppression-overturned, overturned, overturned-until they acknowledge Him whose right they are, who" came unto his own, and his own received him not."

"Then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men."-This is a clause of great difficulty, not in the way of understanding what it means, but of determining who these "seven shepherds" and "eight princes of men" are. The part they are to perform is simply and clearly expressed: "they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders." It is the manner of the deliverance which is described as about to be wrought under the hand of these "seven shepherds and eight princes of men." Now, what hint of this is there to be found in the other prophets? In the prophet Obadiah, who sets forth the enemies of Zion under the name of Edom, as they are here set forth under the name of the Assyrian, it is said, " And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel shall possess that of the Canaanites, even unto Zarephath; and the captivity of Jerusalem, which is in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the south. And saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's " (vers. 20, 21). This, I make no doubt, reveals the same truth, that certain mighty ones shall be raised up in the hour of Zion's extremity, who shall execute judgment upon the mount of her enemies' strength. We may observe of this passage, in passing, that it is the custom among the Jews to understand by Edom, Rome; by Zarephath, France; by Sepharad, the countries which lie around the Mediterranean Sea. And we have already seen good reason to believe, that by "the Assyrian" is to be understood the infidel Antichrist, the last head of Rome, who shall possess these very countries, and whose land is properly expressed by "the land of Nimrod," who was the founder of the Assyrian empire. If I mistake not, there is a footstep of the same act of judgment upon the Assyrian, under the name of "the head," or "Ross," in the cxth Psalm; where it is written of the great act of Melchizedek, "The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath: He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall

wound the head [not heads, but head, the chief or leader of the kings] over many countries "that is to say, over all those lands where he had the sway; namely, the kingdoms of the Roman empire, whose last head is signified by the Assyrian. It may help to throw some further light upon this subject, if we examine what is the difference between the "shepherds" and the "princes of men." Concerning these shepherds, I find a notice in the xxiiid chapter of Jeremiah: "And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase: and I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord" (vers. 3,4). These are set over the restored and multiplied remnant, as rulers under him who is "David's righteous Branch," and his name "JEHOVAH OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." And so also in our text, after mentioning Him who is to "stand and feed in the strength of the Lord," we have mention made of these seven shepherds who feed under him. And if the shepherds be the viceroys of David the one shepherd, who are "the princes of men?" The word translated "princes" is from a root which signifies "to anoint," and occurs in various parts of Scripture : as Josh. xiii. 21; Ezek. xxxii. 30; Dan. xi. 8; Ps. lxxxiii. 12; and is sometimes translated dukes; most commonly princes; literally," anointed ones." It is used of the unction of Messiah: "I have anointed my King upon my holy hill of Zion :" but never of Messiah himself. The name princes, hath reference to their dignity as leaders and commanders of the people: but why the word " of men" should be added, I cannot see; unless it be for the purpose of distinguishing them from the shepherds of the Jewish people; and to declare that in that day God would raise up from amongst men eight anointed kings, who should, with the seven shepherds of Israel, rank under the banner of Him who ariseth against the Assyrian, in order to wrest the sceptre of war out of his hands, and conquer a peace for the whole earth. But because this notion wanteth confirmation from the other Prophets, and rather repugneth to the general strain of prophecy, which setteth the Jews in array against all nations, and all nations in array against the Jews, we are slow to adopt it; and would prefer any other which better answereth to the scope and spirit of prophecy. In the book of Daniel, to which we have already referred as containing the details of the last Assyrian, it is said, that "tidings out of the north and out of the east shall trouble him" (xi.44); and in the Book of Revelation, in preparation for the same time and event, it is said, that "the water of Euphrates was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared." These "kings of the east" have long been regarded by com

mentators as signifying the Ten Tribes, who about this time come manfully in their pride and their glory towards their own land, out of their hiding-places in the East. And, seeing they come up against the Assyrian, I submit whether the "eight princes of men" be not the heads of the ten tribes, the strong nation that was cast far out; and the "seven shepherds" be not the heads of the two tribes, "her that halted," who is scattered abroad over the north country and all countries. It is somewhat remarkable, that the alteration of one letter would make "princes of men" into "princes of the East." With respect to the numbers, "seven" and "eight," I do not agree with those interpreters who understand them loosely, as signifying a very great number of each sort; referring for their authority to such instances as this: "Give a portion to seven, and also to eight " (Eccles. xi. 2). For though such instances were more numerous than they are, I would be very slow to adopt this indefinite use of the words in a prophecy which is very minute in its particulars. Nor do I like any better the old Rabbinical interpretation, that they are fifteen of the chief men of renown raised up from the dead-whose names, were, from amongst the antediluvians, Seth, Enoch, and Methuselah; from among the patriarchs, Abraham, Jacob, and Moses; and from among the kings and prophets, Jesse, David, Saul, Samuel, Elias, Hezekiah, Amos, Zephaniah, and Messiah. Why these were chosen, and by what rule they were ordered into shepherds and principal men, I have never been able to ascertain. It is given by David Kimchi, as derived from the great synagogue of Jerusalem, who deliver it as the tradition of the church. They are arranged into shepherds and princes thus: the seven shepherds or kings, David in the middle; Seth, Enoch, and Methuselah to the right; Abraham, Jacob, and Moses to the left. The eight princes or rulers, Jesse, Saul, Samuel, Amos, Zephaniah, Hezekiah, Elias, Messiah. For all this I can find no authority whatever, and do merely give it as one of the old traditions of the Jewish church; which in its principle, that they are resurrection men, seems to be contradicted by the form of the verb, which is, 66 we will make to arise," not "he will make to arise unto us." I feel it a very painful thing to pass this point without being able to give it a distinct interpretation. There may be a mystery under the numbers seven and eight, the counterpart of that which is under the beast, who is the eighth head and also of the seven. That beast is the same with the Assyrian, and his symbols are the numbers seven and eight; perhaps the counterfeit of the symbols of the true Messiah, which may be in like manner seven and eight: seven shepherds, as the head of the spiritual church, which in the Apocalypse is represented under the symbol of the seven churches of Asia

under their angels; eight princes of men, as the heads of the next dispensation, which in many ways hath to do with the number eight, as may be seen from the measurement of the temple in Ezekiel. There may, perhaps, also be some connection between this last wasting of the Assyrian's land and the former one, which was accomplished by the combination of two powers, the Median and the Persian, who took up God's controversy for his people and redeemed a portion of them. In the book of Esther (ch.i. 14) we learn, that there were seven princes of Persia and Media which saw the king's face, and sat the first in the kingdom. Thus the number seven might be derived from one of the nations; but whether there were any custom in the other connected with the number eight, to give a typical propriety to it, I cannot ascertain. I have heard it suggested, as a solution of this difficult passage, that the seven shepherds may be the seven horns of the beast, which the little horn, after he had plucked up the other three, did rule over. The little horn, including these three, they would understand of the Infidel as well as the Papal Antichrist, of the Assyrian as well as of Babylon; and these seven shepherds would be the seven remaining kings of apostate Christendom. The eight princes of men are, they suppose, the princes who, being gathered under Gog, do follow him to the invasion and oppression of the Jewish people in their land. And if we reckon Ross (translated in our version as an adjective, instead of a substantive noun), Mesech, Tubal, Persia, Ethiopia, Lybia, and Togarmah, there are exactly eight. Now, say they, these seven shepherds and eight princes of men are raised up of God in order to curb the power of the last Antichrist, and so "raised up for us" the Jewish people. To this I object, that it seems to me to change the very spirit of the text, which is, that these shepherds and princes are raised up, to be under Messiah, for a defence against the Assyrian, and for turning the tide of war into his own land; whereas the horns upon the beast, or the kings of Papal and now infidel Christendom, do certainly give their power to the beast, and come to their end along with him in fighting against the Lamb. And the powers of Gog are certainly different from the powers of Christendom, being, as I conceive, the relics of the three former empires (headed by Russia); and though in the outset they be opposed to the infidel head of Rome, who is the first to withstand the settlement of the Jews, still, inasmuch as Gog himself doth afterwards succeed to the same evil work, bringing on the second and concluding act of that great withstanding of the Lord's purpose in the settlement of his people, I do surely perceive that in our text he is included in the Assyrian, and not in those who are raised up to withstand him and to waste his land. There is just one passage that gives a probability to some view of this kind, which is in. Dan.