pretation, of the great facts and doctrines of the Old Testament Scriptures. They have neither of them need, like the heathen nations, to be taught what are "the first elements of the doctrine of Christ," and this circumstance rather increases than diminishes the difficulty of bringing them to the acknowledgment of the saving truth of the Gospel. In this emergency, prayer is the grand resort of the Christian church. The arm of Omnipotence must be earnestly invoked to put forth its constraining power upon the people of the covenant; and prayer, the texture of which is wrought of the prophetic promises of the word, will avail to secure the blessing. "Thou sendest forth thy Spirit; they are created."

It is

The term slain (3) is not probably intended to designate with much precision the manner in which the multitude originally came to "the dust of death." The Greek renders it simply by vous vengoùs toúrovs, these dead, with which the Arabic agrees. undoubtedly equivalent to dead, mortuos, as Rosenmüller renders it, remarking at the same time that it is parallel to the expression Jer. 19. 21, the slain of death, in contradistinction to those slain by the sword. Thus too with the kindred term Ps. 86. 5, "From among the dead, like the slain () that lie in the grave;" i. e. simply the deceased, without reference to the manner in which they came to their death.

VERSE X.

ENG. VERS.

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into

HEB.

ותָּבוֹא והנבאתי כאשר

thein, and they lived, and stood up בָהֶם הָרוּחַ וַיִּהְיוּ וַיַּעַמְדוּ עַל־ upon their feet, an exceeding great רַגְלֵיהֶם חַיִל גָּדוֹל מְאֹד מְאֹד:

GR. OF LXX.

Καὶ προεφήτευσα καθότι ένετείλατό μοι, καὶ εἰσῆλθεν εἰς αὐτοὺς τὸ πνεῦμα, καὶ ἔζησαν, καὶ ἔστησαν ἐπὶ τῶν ποδῶν αὐτῶν, συναγωγὴ πολλὴ σφόδρα.

TARG. OF JONATHAN.

And I prophesied as he commanded me, and the spirit entered into them, and they lived, and they stood upon their feet, an army exceeding great.

army.

ENG. VERS.

And I prophesied as he commanded me, and the spirit entered into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great assembly.

VULG. VERS.

Et prophetavi sicut præceperat mihi; et ingressus est in ea spiritus, et vixerunt; steteruntque super pedes suos, exercitus grandis nimis valde.

COMMENTARY.

10. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding

great army. The action of the prophet in the symbolic machinery is sufficiently obvious. With the clew already obtained we pass from the shadow to the substance. As the duty enjoined upon him is really that which devolves upon us in these latter ages of the world, so we read in the result which crowned his prophetic prayer the blessing that will also follow ours. The bestowment of spiritual life on a large and glorious scale will accrue to the Jews in proportion as the promises to that effect are believingly pleaded. And this result we suppose to be intimated in the language of Paul, Rom. 11. 15, in express allusion to the very Scripture we are now considering: "For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?" As the same Spirit presided over the inditing of all parts of the inspired word, and as the New Testament is but a development of the interior senses of the Old, nothing is more natural than that a running, though often a tacit, allusion should be kept up in the writings of the apostles to those of the prophets. Paul speaks of the ingathering of Israel into the church of Christ as an expositor of Moses and the later prophets, who have unequivocally announced the same grand issue. It is no more then than is to be expected, that the language which he employs should often be such as to refer us at once to the terms of the original predictions, and when he speaks in the passage quoted of the conversion of the Jews as the reception of life by the dead, with what portion of the ancient oracles do we more spontaneously connect it than with the vision of Ezekiel, where the same event is figuratively set forth by the resurrection of the dead to life?

But let us follow out the main idea a little more in detail. The leading intimation undoubtedly is, that the conversion of Israel is to be effected mainly by the bringing to bear upon this object the scope of the inspired predictions which relate to it. These are of a twofold character. (1.) Those which announce their restoration. (2.) Those which foretell the outpouring of the reviving Spirit of the Lord upon them, It is by no means to be supposed that the prophecies of Ezekiel alone are alluded to in this connexion. He, as we have already remarked, is to be regarded as acting in this visionary transaction in a representative character. His His agency foreshadows that of his successors who should sustain in their persons the persons of the members of the church, in whose name they officiate, in coming periods of time, when the actual accomplishment of the event was to be expected. The means to be employed is the exposi tion and application of prophecy, i.e. of all the various prophecies scattered through the writings of the former and the latter seers. Of these it is obvious on inspection that a large portion distinctly announce the effusion of the Holy Spirit in the latter day, and in connexion

with their restoration, upon the house of Israel. With these dispersed oracles the stewards of the mysteries of God, and those to whom they minister, are to become familiar, and by incorporating them into the substance of their prayers, are to prophesy to the wind, breath, or Spirit of the Lord, to form a plea which the divine counsels will forbid to be unavailing. In these it is undoubtedly true that the prophecy of Ezekiel is peculiarly rich, but the same note is struck, in multitudes of instances, by the harps of the other prophets. From the whole collectively we may adduce the following as specimens: Ezek. 11. 19, " And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them an heart of flesh; that they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God." Ch. 36. 24-26, "For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." Ch. 26. 27, " And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them." Is. 32. 13, 15, "Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers, yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city;—until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field." Zech. 12. 10, " And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for an only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born."

6

These are among the prophetic pleadings with which the throne of grace is to be solicited, and the reviving 'Spirit' of the Lord to be invoked. It is by the citation of these and similar predictions. that the servants of the Most High are to prophesy to and concerning the divine wind,' which can alone blow a quickening breath upon the slain multitudes. The result is emphatically indicated by the words that follow: "and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army," or as the original more expressively has it-"an army great exceedingly, exceedingly." How insignificant compared with this will be all prior successes in the line of Jewish conversions! If in the primitive days of the church one Apostle could say to another, "Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe," how will the heart of Christian benevolence swell to see the grow

ing numbers counted by hundreds of thousands, when "the day of the Lord shall be great in Jezreel ?" "Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear, break forth in singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child; for more are the children of the desolate, than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.”

THE INTERPRETATION.

VERSE XI.

ENG. VERS.

Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope

HEB.

.is lost we are cut off for our parts הִנֵּה אֹמְרִים יָבְשׁוּ עַצְמוֹוֹתֵינוּ וְאָבְדָה תִקְוָתֵנוּ נִגְזַרְנוּ לָכוּ :

COMMENTARY.

11. Then said he unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. In view of the peculiar and striking character of the imagery employed in the present vision, the reader cannot but feel that nothing would be more desirable than a divine declaration of its import; and with such a declaration we are here furnished. Upon an authority perfectly infallible we are assured that the substance of the shadowed materiel of the vision is "the whole house of Israel;" that is, the great mass, the major portion of the covenanted race; just as Paul when he says, Rom. 11, 26, " and so all Israel shall be saved," means not each and every individual of the nation, but the bulk of it. And it is worthy of notice in this connexion, that it is one of the most familiar of the Talmudical sayings, that "all Israel hath a share in the world to come;" i. e. in the Messiah's dispensation. However applicable the depicted scenery may be in itself to the condition in which the gospel finds the great mass of men, and however well adapted to represent the state of Christian congregations under a general dearth of spiritual influences, from which they need to be powerfully resuscitated, yet nothing is clearer than that its direct, designed, and legitimate drift is to symbolize the political and moral position of the literal Israel at the time to which the spirit of prophecy points. We cannot conceive that the canons of sound interpretation will allow the putting of any sense upon the language which would preclude a primary adumbration of the literal house of Israel in its long continued, deplorable, and apparently hopeless depression. Accordingly, if the literal race of Israel is here designated, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion, that a literal restoration is with equal explicitness taught in the vision. Thus also Ezek. 11. 17, "Therefore say, thus saith the Lord, I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel." Again, Ezek. 39. 25– 29, "Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be jealous for my holy name; after that they have borne their shame, and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed against me, when they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid. When I have brought them again from the people, and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations; then shall they know that I am the LORD their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there. Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out