to act, by special and amazing interpositions, on men and on human affairs. Therefore let all the families of the earth, to whom these tidings shall come, bow down in submissive silence to receive the law of wisdom, goodness, and authority infinite. NOTE FROM PAGE 89. Archbishop Newcome renders the words, "after the ob taining of glory he hath sent me;" for the purpose, as he explains, "of acquiring glory to his people, in restraining and humbling their enemies." Dr. Blaney renders the same words, "sending me after the glory;" and has given such a translation of the whole passage as to make the person, who describes himself as sent, and as shaking his hand over the nations, to be not the Lord of hosts, but the angei who delivers the message, which is thereby reduced to only six words. In order to effect this, he has altered the vowel points of the verb, so as to make it a participle suspending the sense, and has rendered as an affirmative particle, "surely," instead of the causal one, for." These alterations cannot claim reception, as if they were the happy means of reconciling some inconsistency, of removing some difficulty in the grammar, or clearing up some obscurity in the sense. They have no such effect or tendency. as they go to support an hypothesis, which, if admitted, would invalidate the strongest arguments hitherto derivable from the old testament, in proof of a doctrine, on which the redemption of mankind, whether revealed in the old, or in the new testament, is founded, so they must commend themselves to those chiefly, who deny that doctrine and slight that redemption, and who consequently receive them with views and feelings, to which the learned author of them was an entire stranger. Dr. Blaney himself can say no more in favour of his rendering, than that the words may be so rendered, and that he prefers so to render them; (appendix to Zechariah, p. 80 and 81;) and accordingly he manifests But how little confidence he reposed in it, by his endeavour to represent the received translation, as in point of meaning little, if at all, different from his own. "After the glory hath he sent me, or, as it may be rendered, sending me after the glory," plainly intending by the particle "or," to distribute the expressions, as different in form only, and to connect them, as alike in sense. Yet the learned professor could hardly have failed to see, that in the former case the personal pronoun, "me," cannot be referred to the angel, who delivers the proclamation, without offering some violence, (the degree of which will be differently estimated by different persons,) to the grammatical construction of the words; whereas in the latter it cannot be referred to any, but the angel. Is there any breach of charity in supposing, that, because he saw this, he admitted into the text of his translation a rendering, whose highest recommendation is, to those, who do not hold his hypothesis, that it is possible? But the very possibility may be called in question, until a passage shall be produced, in which a participle is found suspending the sense in the same circumstances, as it is made to do in Dr. Blaney's translation. I am indeed aware, that there are texts, in which a participle is introduced after the formulary, but I have not lighted on any one, which is strictly parallel. : The phrase, "to send after," in the sense given it by Dr. Blaney, seems equally to stand in need of support from parallel passages. He observes, that "to send a person after a thing implies the requisition of his service for that particular purpose;" for the purpose, I suppose, of getting that thing; and he commends the latin translator of the Syriac version in the London Polyglott, for rendering "ad prosequendum honorem." The English phrase itself is, I suspect, rather too colloquial; but admitting its purity, it may still be doubted, whether in Hebrew the object of a mission is ever coupled with the verb w by the preposition N. Unless too it should be found, that the phrase, wherever it occurs, is always used in that sense, might still retain in this place its usual sense of "after," in point of time. The LXX, the vulgate, and the Chaldee paraphrast have so rendered it, and in regard to the Syriac, Dr. Blaney was unable to extend his commendation from the latin translator to the version itself, which has literally, "after the glory." Another strong argument against Dr. Blaney's translation is to be collected from the scope and sense of the passage. The words of the Lord are introduced by the angel, as the ground and reason of his exhortation to the Jews to remove from Babylon and its neighbourhood, and as a strong inducement to them so to do. But the six words, so penuriously allotted to the Almighty out of the angel's speech, contain no special reason, nor offer any special inducement to it. "Surely he that touched you hath touched the apple of his own eye." The sentence expresses indeed a severe menace to the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, and so far a general encouragement to themselves, but no particular inducement to remove from Babylon. Dr. Blaney has indeed endeavoured to circumscribe the general proposition contained in the words and to point them to Babylon, as their particular object, by rendering the first participle y in the past instead of the present time, and by altering the latter into a verb in the perfect tense; but even thus, the sense, in which the words may apply to the exhortation to flee from Babylon, is left so vague and indeterminate, as to give the sentence little effect beyond a general proposition. The words, which really contain the argument for the Jews to quit Babylon, are part of those, which Dr. Blaney has attributed to the angel speaking in his own person; that he would be sent against the nations, who, at the time of his being sent, would be the spoilers and oppressors of the Jews; and that he would make them a spoil unto their servants, that is to say, to the Jews, for those, whom they treated as servants, are the persons, whom they spoiled. This is necessary to be observed, in order to make the opposition full and the threatened retribution perfect. Now since the Babylonians, at the period of Zechariah's vision, had fallen from their rank, as an imperial people, a rank which they never regained, they cannot be the persons intended in this description, for the participle, w, if we give it a perfect signification, does not express the perfect past, those that have spoiled and have now ceased to spoil, but the perfect present, those that have spoiled and yet continue to spoil. Indeed the exhortation to remove from Babylonia, when taken together with this assurance, amounts in effect to an explicit declaration, that that was not the country, nor its inhabitants the people, intended in the exactness of God's retributive justice, to be made the spoil of the Jews. Otherwise doubtless they would have been exhorted to remain there, that so they might be instruments in bringing to pass his purpose and be ready at hand to seize upon the promised spoil. Farther, the words, which Dr. Blaney puts into the angel's mouth are truly sublime, expressive of the highest authority and of power almighty. They are entirely worthy · of the supreme ruler himself, and utterly unfit to be applied to, or assumed by, any created being. The reasonable and powerful objection hence raised by Dr. Eveleigh is by no means obviated by the two passages, which Dr. Blaney has produced in his appendix,2 Kings, xix,35, and 2 Samuel, xxiv. 16. In the former of the two it is merely stated, that "the angel of the Lord went out and smote; " in the latter it is said that "the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it," but was bidden by his divine sovereign to desist. In both these texts an angel is represented, as the minister of the divine anger, sent to destroy people by a pestilence. But without dwelling on the consideration, that this is not specifically the case before us, it is to be observed, that in the former no one expression is used in the least similar to those attributed by Dr. Blaney to the angel in Zechariah; and consequently that may be dismissed without farther notice. In the latter indeed the angel is said to stretch out his hand, ; but the form of the expression in the original Hebrew is far from being parallel with that, which in the instance before us Dr. Blaney supposes to be applied by the angel to himself. He does not even state our english version correctly (I am however far from thinking the incorrectness to be intentional) when he describes the angel, as stretching out his hand " over Jerusalem; for our translation has not "over," but " upon." In the Hebrew no preposition is expressed; and I am bold to say, that that, which is to be understood, is not by, over, but or the prefix Lamed, to or towards. See Buxtorf's Thes. Heb. p. 574. The preposition by is found joined with w in only three places, in two of which, 1 Kings, xiii, 4, and Job, 31, 21, our translators have rendered it "against," and in the third, "to," 1 Chronicles, 13, 10; the propriety of which renderings none can doubt. Therefore if be understood in 2 Samuel, xxiv. 16, it must be in the sense not of" over," but of" to or against." In other places where the phrase occurs, it is construed with or the prefix Lamed, for "to or towards," with Beth for "against," and with Vau, when it is joined to another verb could |