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Psalms', Over Edom will I cast out my shoe,' which, though by itself it may carry a threatening idea, yet, in connexion with the other parts of the Psalm, appears to have a more favourable meaning. And to open up that meaning, we have something in the short but affecting story of Ruth, to be a kind of key to us. Plucking off the shoe was the outward symbol of redeeming an inheritance, in which sense, the speaker in the Psalm, who seems to be the Beloved of the Song, may use it to claim his right of redeeming Edom; and, in the same sense, there is no harm, I hope, in expounding it here, to describe the spouse under this emblem of divine original, to be the redeemed in•heritance' of her Beloved.

The joints of thy thighs like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.-This part of the description, and what follows in the next verse, are neither of easy, nor of what we would call decent explication, in the literal sense: In the spiritual sense, there is nothing of indelicacy, and no great difficulty. Thy thighs, 77, irkika, as belonging to our spiritual mother, may have a reference to the

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Psalm 1x. 8. and cviii. 9.

2 Chap. iv. 7, 8. compared with, and conform to, the appointment, Deut. xxv. 5-10.

3, adum, humanity, human nature, who will lead me into Adum? Ps. lx. 9. Who is this that cometh from Adum? Isaiah lxiii. s. See above, p. 322.

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solemnity used by Abraham', and afterwards adopted to the same purpose by Jacob, Put thy hand under my thigh, and and I will make thee swear,' &c. Which reference, if just, would be a symbolical reminding us of the sacred engagements we are under to the church, and of her having the same authority over us that Abraham had over his steward, or Jacob over his son Joseph. It may likewise have a retrospect to what befel her old representative Jacob, in his divine wrestling 3, when the mighty one, with whom he struggled, ' touched the hollow of his thigh, and put it out of joint: And to this touch, which had such an effect upon Jacob, there is something in the description before us, which, when properly attended to, seems peculiarly to correspond. The work of the hands of a cunning workman.-The word so arbitrarily rendered cunning workman, is, amen, which, in all the many places where it occurs, always retains its radical idea of truth, faithfulness, and certainty. Indeed there is no christian who does not understand the import of this Hebrew word, which every

> Gen. xxiv. 2.

2 Gen. xlvii. 29.

3 Gen. xxxii. 25.

4 I have gone through all Calasio's quotations, and find this to be invariably the case, except Cant. vii. 1. ‘ opus manuum artificis.' Robertson's Lexicon makes a separate sense of this root, amen, to be' arti'fex, opifex,' and in proof of it, produces Cant. vii. 1. Buxtorf had done the same before him. But for all this there is no foundation, and as little necessity. We read of a time, indeed, when cunning workmen were really and literally employed, Exod. xxxv. 35. where the word is not amen, but awm, hushb.

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every European language has made its own, amen; and tho' we had not had Isaiah's warrant for blessing and swearing by 2, Alei amen, the God of 'truth',' we cannot forget who it is that takes it to himself Thus saith the Amen, the true and 'faithful witness.' It was he whose hands, if we admit the prophet Hosea as a competent interpreter, wrought that change on the old church's thigh. It is he who forms the irkim, thighs,' of his church, to answer all the purposes, metaphorical or emblematical, to which scripture applies the word irk. For besides the human body, we find it applied to many other things, to houses, to mountains, to caverns, and to nothing more frequently than the sacred tabernacle throughout the Books of Exodus and Leviticus, where we read sides. Thus, for one instance, we read of the sacrifice being killed on 'the side (irk, thigh) of the altar northward 3, to which Isaiah alludes, in that vaunting speech which he puts into the mouth of the king of Babylon, as typifying antichrist, I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides (irkti, thighs) of the north;' which Robertson's Lexicon quotes Cocceius thus expounding, The sides of the north, i. e. next to the altar, between God dwelling in his temple and the people, as it were vicar of God, and mediator between God and men 5.'

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VER.

1 Isaiah lav. 16.

3 Levit. i. 11.

2 Rev. iii. 14.

4 Isaiah xiv. 13.

5 Compare 2 Thess. ii. 4.

VER. 2.-Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor; thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.

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There is no word in the text for like-thy navel a goblet, thy belly an heap. The word for liquor is am, mezg, which the LXX. have rendered ngaμa, and our margin, mixture.' And here, before I go further, I cannot but express my surprise, on the one hand, that Jerom, in whose time it is certain that the word идарах of the LXX. was in use, should have dropt it, and given us the general rendering, poculis, cups;' and on the other hand, that our translators, when it had fallen into disuse, should have again brought it into view, even upon the margin. Be in this what will, the spiritual sense here is so clear, under the apparent uncouthness of the natural one, that our late paraphraser has been forced to take notice of it, and I shall quote his very words: ' The spirit, as represented by a spring of water, is said to flow from Christ; the cup of blessing from his spouse, the church; and that, a mixed cup, in opposition to the cup of wrath, ' which is unmixed'. These texts, compared with many others, shew the particular reason why these things are mentioned among the perfections of the bride. To strengthen this remark, it may not be amiss to observe, that the word for goblet, jas, agn, seems, from the use of it, to have belonged to

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VOL. II.

I Rev. xiv. 10.

2 O si się omnia dixisset!

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things sacred, being found only here, and in two other places, where it is said', Moses took of the blood, (which he calls the blood of the covenant"), and put it in agnuth, basons.' And again, in Isaiah's mystical prefiguration of Christ's dignity, under the type of Eliakim 3, the glory of his father's house -the vessels of agnuth, cups;' which rendering, had it been retained here, would have been more pointed towards the spiritual application. The navel too *, being the central point of the body, where we are told a rupture or wound would be mortal, may represent the middle of the sacred fabric, where the krama, mixture, is prepared, and where, in times of primitive zeal, it was never wanting.'

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Thy belly a heap of wheat set about with lilies.It is strange, that the eye, which saw spiritual meaning in the first part, did not see it here too, where it is equally, if not more, plain and obvious. Of wheat-not the emblem only, but the very substance of nourishment, the foundation of bread, the staff of life, of bread, which both naturally and spiritually strengthens man's heart: And the belly, as in nature, the concocter and distributer

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I Exod. xxiv. 6,

2 See St Matth. xxvi. 28.

3 Chap. xxii. 24.

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4 See Prov. iii. 8. The fear of the Lord-health to thy navel,' And Ezek. xvi. 4. Thy navel was not cut,' one of the miseries of the wretched foundling of human nature.

5 Psalm civ. 15,

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