VER. 17.-The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.

3

The connexion seems to continue the femalespeaker, our bed, our house,' either expressing community of goods' with the original proprietor dudi, or speaking of herself diffusively as before'; and as an apostle could say, We have an 6 house not made with hands.' This of the apostle, I think, points to the house here before us; and the choice of the emblems is admirably descriptive. The beams (the roof in general) 3 of this house are cedars. Every one knows what frequent mention the scripture makes of cedars. They are called goodly cedars,' literally according to the LXX. Hedgous T8 8, marg. cedars of God; they are his property, or materials for his use. The temple, God's house, is called a house of cedar. Cedar is the most durable wood that is known, so a very proper ingredient in the house of God's building.' 'Our rafters of fir.' So the Latin has it' abietes,' firs, and the LXX xuñаgiσσi, cypresses, all without any certainty. The word for 'firs,' and in conjunction with cedars, in all other places, is, brushim: here, and only here, it is 5, bruthim, with the tau instead of the shin, which two letters never exchange with one another; and by its formation with the final tau, it may be traced

to

I See ver. iv.

3 Gen. xix. 8.

2 2 Cor. v. I.

4 Psalm 1xxx. 10.

6

to the root, bar, to purify or cleanse; from whence comes the so much contended and much misunderstood word ", berith, which we read everywhere covenant, except in Jerem. ii. 22. and Malachi iii. 2. where the context has forced the translations into the radical idea of cleansing, and to render the word soap,' which has not the least affinity with covenant.' There is a famous text in Ezekiel, where our translation spoils the beautifully expressive allusion in the Hebrew, which delights in such significant terms. I will bring you into the bond of ", haberith, the covenant, purification, • 17, vebruthi, and I will purge out from you',' &c. The word covenant darkens the sense here, as there is no correspondence of ideas between covenant and purging, which the easy transition in the Hebrew from brith to bruthi, immediately following, so clearly indicates, and which therefore one might think the prophet had in his view. Similar to this formation of the verb bruthi, I will purge, is our word bruthim, carrying in it the idea of purging, cleansing, &c. and, if it was designed, (as by its apposition to cedars it seems to have been) to signify some kind of wood, it might have been rendered cleanse wood.' So we come to the meaning of this fine piece of figurative description, by whomever spoken; and I cannot put it into better words than those of St Paul, We have a 'building of God, a house not made with hands, 'eternal in the heavens.' Of God's building indeed

deed-whose builder and maker is God',' yet exoμev, "we have it:' it is ours by gift, it belongs to us, and is (as another apostle speaks of it under the metaphor of an inheritance, and in terms explanatory of the passage before us) incorruptible and unde'filed,' the bruthim rafters, and that fadeth not away,' the cedar beams, reserved in heaven for 'us "." 'I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever3.

6

I Heb. xi. 10.

21 St Peter i. 4.

3 Psalm xxiii. 6. Compare St John xiv. 2. 3.

CHAP.

CHAP. II.

VER. 1.-I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

HERE is an elegant, and what may be called a 'florid' description, and in language that carries a double, but not contrary meaning. The rose and lily, or whatever the Hebrew words signify, were typical of joy and rejoicing: The de'sert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose'.' 'Is'rael shall grow as the lily? So the meaning will be, that she was indeed blossoming, and made a pleasant figure, as the rose and lily do for a while, but that like them, her beauty was fading, and ready to decay under every nipping blast. Sharon was the name of a country in the land of Gilead 3, where David had herds feeding; and seems to have been remarkable for its fertility, from the prophet's denunciation concerning it- Sharon is like a wilderness". The other word, quim, vallies, signifies deep, and is mostly used in a

'py, om

melan

I Isaiah xxxv. i.

31 Chron. v. 16.

5 Isaiah xxxiii. 9.

2 Hosea xiv. 5.

4 1 Chron. xxvii. 29.

I

I am come

melancholy sense, as in Ps. Ixix. 2. ' into deep waters;' Ps. cxxx. 1. Out of the deeps 'have I called;' and in Prov. ix. 18. The deeps ' of hell,' &c. so conveys the idea of danger or oppression. The church, therefore, under these two similes, denotes her present condition, flourishing indeed for the time, like these two fair flowers, and attracting the eye of every beholder, but in dan ger of being blown down like a rose on a plain, or overflown like a lily in a marsh. As a prophet admonishes us the goodliness thereof fadeth as a flower of the field'. Or, if we will trace the words rose and lily to their radical meaning, we shall discover another interpretation equally consonant to scripture, and expressive of the church's character. The word for rose,' nn, habtzeleth, is not properly a derivative, but a compound, and may be resolved into its two components, or roots,

, hab, to hide, conceal, and, tzel, a shade, or something (flower or plant) blossoming, couching, sheltering under a shade for protection, defence, or cover. The lily,' n, shoshanneth, comes from

shush, to rejoice or be glad; so means the joyful, rejoicing thing. In application to the church, she flourishes, thrives, grows, though not in the eye of the world, yet, habbah, concealed, hidden, (the hiding of his power,' hide thyself for a moment') under the tzel, shadow of her protec

Isaiah xl. 6. quoted by an apostle-1 St Peter i. 24.

'tor,

2 Habak. iii. 4.

3 Isaiah xxvi. 20.