be the highest and greatest of the gods, and to be the same with Jupiter and the Sun: and the name Adad, says Macrobius, signifies One; as likewise does the word Achad in Isaiah. Many learned men therefore have supposed, and with some probability, that the prophét means the same pretended deity. 8, in the Syrian and Chaldean dialects is ; and perhaps by reduplication of the last letter, to express perfect unity, it may have become 77, not improperly expressed in Latin by Macrobius Adad, without the aspirate. It was also pronounced by the Syrians themselves, with a weaker aspirate, 77; as in Benhadad, Hadadezer, names of their kings, which were certainly taken from their chief object of worship. This seems to me to be a probable account of this name. But the Masoretes correct the text in this place; their marginal reading is лn, which is the same word, only in the feminine form and so read thirty MSS. (six ancient) and the two oldest editions. This Le Clerc approves, and supposes it to mean Hecate, or the Moon; and he supports his hypothesis by arguments not at all improbable. See his Note on the place. Whatever the particular mode of idolatry, which the prophet refers to, might be, the general sense of the place is perfectly clear. But Chald. and Syr. and after them Symmachus and Theodotion, cut off at once all these difficulties, by taking the word 8 in its common meaning, not as a proper name; the two latter rendering the sentence thus: onoW AXANAWV ED μέσω εσθιόντων το κρέας το χοιρειον one after another in the midst of those that eat swine's flesh. I suppose they all read in their copies 78 78, one by one, or perhaps 778 708 708, one after another. See a large dissertation on this subject in Davidis Millii Dissertationes Selectæ, Dissert. vi. 18. For I know their deeds-] A word is here lost out of the present text, leaving the text quite imperfect. The word is y7r, knowing, sup. plied from the Syriac. The Chald. had the same word in the copy before him, which he paraphrases by a 'p, their deeds are manifest before me : and the Aldine and Complutensian editions of LXX. acknowledge the same word, sisaμai: which is verified by MS. Pachom, and the Arabic version. I think there can be little doubt of its being genuine. Ibid. And I come-] For л, which will not accord with any thing in the sentence, 1 read 2, with a MS.; the participle answering to 977, with which agree LXX. Syr. Vulg. Perhaps it ought to be 21, Syr. quando veniam and so LXX. according to Edit. Ald. and Complut. and Cod. Marchal. 19. who draw the bow] I much suspect that the words nup ‘awn, who draw the bow, are a corruption of the word un, Moschi, the name of a nation situated between the Euxine and Caspian seas; and properly joined with ban, the Tibareni: see Bochart, Phaleg. iii. 12. The LXX. have oro, without any thing of the drawers of the bow: the word being once taken for a participle, the bow was added to make sense of it. nwp, the bow, is omitted in a MS Ibid. who never heard my name] For you, my fame, I read with LXX. and Syr. 'p, my name. 20. —and in counes] There is a sort of vehicle, much used in the East, consisting of a pair of hampers, or cradles, thrown across a camel's back, one on each side; in each of which a person is carried. They have a cov ering to defend them from the rain and the sun. Thevenot calls them counes, i. p. 356. Maillet describes them as covered cages hanging on both sides of a camel. At Aleppo, says Dr. Russel, women of inferior condition in longer journeys are commonly stowed, one on each side of a mule, in a sort of covered cradles." Nat. Hist. of Aleppo, p. 89. These seem to be what the prophet means by the word D. See Harmer, Observ. i. p. 445. 66 21. —and for Levites] For ob, fifty-nine MSS. (eight ancient,) have pb, adding the conjunction, as the sense seems necessarily to require : and so read all the ancient versions. See Josн. iii. 3, and the various readings on that place in Kennicott's Bible. 24. For their worm shall not die-] These words of the prophet are applied by our blessed Saviour, MARK ix. 44, to express the everlasting punishment of the wicked in Gehenna, or in hell. Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom, was very near to Jerusalem to the south-east: it was the place where the idolatrous Jews celebrated that horrible rite of making their children pass through the fire, that is, of burning them in sacrifice, to Moloch. To put a stop to this abominable practice, Josiah defiled, or desecrated, the place, by filling it with human bones: 2 KINGS xxiii. 10, 14, and probably it was the custom afterwards to throw out the carcasses of animals there; and it became the common burying place for the poorer people of Jerusalem. Our Saviour expressed the state of the blessed by sensible images; such as Paradise, Abraham's bosom, or, which is the same thing, a place to recline next to Abraham at table in the kingdom of heaven; see MATT. viii. 11. (Canabat Nerva cum paucis. Veiento proximus, atque etiam in sinu recumbebat." Plin. Epist. iv. 22. Compare JOHN xiii. 23,) for we could not possibly have any conception of it, but by analogy from worldly objects: in like manner he expressed the place of torment under the image of Gehenna; and the punishment of the wicked, by the worm which there preyed on the carcasses, and the fire which consumed the wretched victims. Marking however, in the strongest manner, the difference between Gehenna and the invisible place of torment; namely, that in the former the suffering is transient; the worm itself, that preys on the body, dies; and the fire, which totally consumes it, is soon extinguished: whereas in the figurative Gehenna the instruments of punishment shall be everlasting, and the suffering without end for there "the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." : These emblematical images, expressing heaven and hell, were in use a mong the Jews before our Saviour's time; and in using them he complied with their notions. "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God," says the Jew to our Saviour, LUKE xiv. 15. And in regard to Gehenna, the Chaldee Parphrast, as I observed before on chap. xxx. 33, renders everlasting, or continual, burnings, by "the Gehenna of everlasting fire." And before his time the son of Sirach, vii. 17, had said, “ the vengeance of the ungodly is fire and worms." So likewise the author of the book of Judith; "Wo to the nations rising up against my kindred : the Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the day of judgement, in putting fire and worms in their flesh :" chap. xvi. 17, manifestly referring to the same emblem. ( |