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member, (3) the close juxtaposition also in prophecy with the rise and progress of Messiah's kingdom, of His conquests among the Gentiles who should become IIis willing tributaries, the general adaptation of the form of the narrative is obvious, connecting as it does all these associations with the spiritual generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.' Accordingly we find that the genealogy is traced from the father of the faithful' primarily, and secondarily from the head of royalty in Judah; and it is divided so as to include three double hebdomads, or six weeks of generations, from Abraham to Christ; comprehending the full period of the preparatory dispensation towards Israel, a period which was to terminate in the seventy weeks of years reaching from the rebuilding of the temple to the coming of the Messiah the Prince,' who is the everlasting Father,'x i. e. the father of the age or generation reaching from the incarnation to the end of the world, and denominated accordingly by the prophets the latter days,' 'the time of the end,' viewed as it was by them in relation to the beginning and end of the final dispensation of Christianity, viz. the first and second advents, which are, in the language of prophecy, conjoined and viewed in apparent identity with each other. Now when we consider the typical connection in which the seventh day of creation stands related in Scripture to this latter period," as the figure and memorial of the rest of Israel from the bondage of Egypt in the land of Canaan, culminating in its antitype, viz. the spiritual deliverance of his people from their sins wrought by Christ, followed by that eternal rest in heaven which is the final inheritance of the saints, we can hardly fail to infer the corresponding relation of the six days of creation to the preparatory period of six weeks of generations. Seven times six generations would appear therefore to have been analogously chosen (agreeably to the mystical import of that sacred multiple) to measure the 'fulness of time' during

Isa. xlix. 6; lx. 1, &c. &c.; Ps. xlv.; lxii.; Ixviii. 29, 30; lxxii. 10, 11. u Dan. ix. 25. * Isa. ix. 6. y Cf. note °, p. 64.

By comparing Deut. v. 15, with Exod. xx. 11, it will be seen that the hallowing of the seventh day (Gen. ii. 3) had a prospective reference to the deliverance out of Egypt. It is remarkable also that of the seventh day alone is no evening recorded; as if to indicate its further expansive reference to that eternal rest which remaineth for the people of God (see Heb. iv. 9). In connection with the argument of that chapter we may observe, that since the spiritual deliverance completed by Christ's resurrection is the antitype of the Egyptian deliverance, and precedes the rest in heaven, even as the latter did the rest in Canaan, the principle of the divine injunction in Deut. v. 15, is applicable, under the Christian dispensation, in support of the practice of the Church in celebrating the weekly festival of the resurrection.

a In Isa. xxx. 26, it is said, in order to denote the plenitude of the blessings of Messiah's kingdom, that the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of

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which the divine purposes in respect to the new creation of humanity in Christ were gradually developed by means of the divine economy which originated in the call of Abram, and in the promise made to him as Abraham, the representative of the natural and spiritual Israel. The design of that economy was to unfold, by means of the various dispensations towards the natural seed kept under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the Father,' that idea of the Messiah's work which was to be finally reached through the images of captivity and return, the idea of which the incarnation and mediatorial work of Christ is the objective realisation, and of which the law contained the shadow. Accordingly by the juxtaposition in ver. 17 of David and the Captivity with Christ, as the last terms of the two first series of generations which define the periods of the government by Judges and Kings, the Messiah is presented in a relation analogous (when viewed in connection with ver. 21) to what we read in the prediction of the prophet of the captivity, who describes the coming king as 'the righteous branch'e which should spring forth from the house of David to be the Saviour of Judah and mankind, and should accomplish a deliverance and restoration for his people in which the memory of the redemption out of Egypt should be merged, and of which the first settlement in Canaan under Joshua was a type, by bringing up and leading the spiritual seed of the house of Israel out of the north country and from all countries whither the Lord had driven them; a result which has yet to be consummated by the gathering of the remnant of the natural seed dispersed throughout the world into the one Church of Christ.d

The tendency, however, of the early associations of an Israelite and of the traditions and prejudices of his nation, was to attach to the kingdom of Messiah, as portrayed by the prophets, a worldly and visible glory, and to limit the full benefits of the promise to the natural seed of the house of Israel. Had there been nothing in the record of Christ's genealogy to neutralise this tendency, the seven days.' So we read of the seven gifts of the Spirit; of the seven candlesticks in the book of Revelation, with Christ walking in the midst, representing the universal Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all,' &c. &c. b Gal. iv. 2.

Jer. xxiii. 5. Cf. Isa. xi. 1, which is very significant, the word stem being equivalent to what woodmen term a stool, and serving to propagate its kind when the parent stock has become apparently extinct and dead. Thus was Messiah to sprout forthas a twig out of the stem of Jesse, and as a branch to grow out of his roots. (Cf. ch. liii. 2). Immediately afterwards, in the tenth verse, He is called the root of Jesse,' the benefits derived from which are represented as universal. Cf. Jer. xxxiii. 15; Zech. iii. 8; vi. 12.

d See Rom. xi. 25, 26, where the distinction in the original between T 'Iσpanλ (the natural Israel), ver. 25, and was 'Iσpanλ, comprehending the fulness of the Gentiles,' and the remnant of the natural seed, who, if they abide not in unbelief, shall be grafted in again' (ver. 23), is lost in the English version.

result might naturally have contributed to blind the eyes of an Israelite to the spiritual fulfilment in Jesus Christ of the types and prophecies of the Old Testament. In juxtaposition therefore with the leading ancestors of the Messiah and of his royal progenitor, the Holy Spirit suggests a collocation of names tending effectually to check the above-mentioned tendency and to prepare the faithful Israelite to discern the spiritual character, and through it the universality of Messiah's kingdom. In the recorded connection of the incestuous Thamar with the head and representative of the line of Judah (in the mention of whose twin sons there is no doubt a mystical significance), of the heathen and harlot Rahab and the Moabitess Ruth with the progenitors of David, and of the adulterous wife of Uriah with the royal ancestor of the Messiah himself, and in the pre-eminent relation to the Messiah thus assigned to such naturally polluted and accursed mothers above the virtuous matrons of the same line, the faithful Israelite would be constrained to look for some spiritual purpose, extending to and indicating the gathering unto Messiah of the Gentiles as what could alone, from the nature of the case, explain the historical circumstance of such natural aliens and transgressors of the divine law being engrafted into the royal stock out of which the righteous branch's was to grow. For the rites and ordinances of the system of worship by which Israel was distinguished as a holy people unto the Lord, implied and enforced on every Israelite, separation and purification from all natural uncleanness or pollution, and the absence accordingly of all intercourse (especially by marriage) with the accursed nations of Canaan and the heathen; whilst on the part of those destined to sacred offices a special unction and consecration were also requisite.

Now in regard to the two Gentile mothers whose names appear in the list, the well-known circumstances which attended their adoption into the royal line were suited to unfold this spiritual purpose in a manner harmonising analogously with the general tenor of the narrative. Rahab and Ruth are recorded as the wives respectively of Salmon, the Prince of Judah and first

h

e Gen. xxxviii. 27-30. The mention of both Phares and Zara in the record may indicate the two classes of the natural and spiritual seed, divided by the covenant of circumcision (perhaps denoted by the red thread), but united in the one covenant of the blood of Christ, who has made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition,' &c. (Eph. ii. 14).

f Gen. xlix. 10.

8 See note, p. 68.

h Nahshon, the father of Salmon, Salmah, or Salma (as he is variously termed in the Old Testament authorities for this portion of the genealogy, viz., Ruth iv. 18-22, and 1 Chron. ii. 9-15), is recorded in Num. i. 7, vii. 12-17, as prince of the tribe of Judah in the desert, two years after the passage of the Red Sea. That Salmon, born to him in the wilderness, should be among the leaders who invaded Canaan under Joshua, and one of the captors of Jericho, synchronizes therefore in the natural order of things with his marriage to Rahab; a circumstance which supplies

lord of Bethlehem during the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, and of Boaz, the lineal heir of the same house in the peaceful times that followed the conquest of the land. Viewed in this connection, the relative position of the two Gentilesses in the divine economy of which the conquest and occupation by Israel of Canaan constituted a leading part will be apparent. The name of Rahab was associated with the destruction of Jericho. Now that event was characterised by circumstances of an obviously mystical character, and such as justify us in assigning to it a typical relation to the destruction of the empire of sin and Satan, of which this visible world is the seat a destruction which, in the mind of the spirit, as expressed by the prophets, was to precede and accompany the establishment of the throne of Messiah and his seed, prefigured in the conquest and possession of Canaan, especially under the alternately warlike and peaceful reign of David and his successor, whose kingdoms signified that of the Messiah under its several aspects of conquest and peaceful prosperity following in the train of the most mighty' Prince and Conqueror. Six days were the divinely allotted period during which the walls of the accursed city were to be encompassed seven times by the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets, and followed by the ark of God, whose presence was to be manifested in judgment and mercy, in the destruction of the accursed city, with its idolatrous inhabitants, and in the salvation of the faithful Rahab, with her family, as the type of that future Church of the redeemed whom the mystical Joshua should save from their sins, and thus from the final destruction of the world, when accomplished in the sevenfold fulness of divine vengeance, the measure of its iniquity being then full.

In the marriage of Ruth with Boaz, the peaceful heir of the house of Bethlehem, the Gentile Church is exhibited under another aspect, as voluntarily renouncing the idolatrous worship of heathenism, and also as approved of by the contrast which her faith and obedience under trial presents to that of the reprobate or apostate sister Church. Ruth and Orpah had been alike favoured with the calling of adoption into the family of Abraham; but when adherence to the worship of the true God, and to his adopted family, involved the renunciation of natural kindred and of earthly

a very sufficient historical foundation for a tradition of the Babylonian Talmud that she was espoused to Joshua himself.

i We know from the books of Samuel and Ruth that Bethlehem was the patriarchal seat of Jesse, Obed, and Boaz; the presumption from which is, that it must have been the seat of Salmon also (see 1 Chron. ii. 11, 51). Dr. Mill suggests, as a most probable supposition,' that Caleb, here mentioned, may have adopted Salmon the son of Nahshon as heir of Bethlehem; Caleb being the patriarchal occupant of the cities of southern Judæa.-Mill's Vindication of Our Lord's Genealogies, 1842, pp. 129, 130.

Josh. ch. vi.

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home and relations, Ruth alone clave' unto her mother-in-law, under whose guidance and training she was destined, in the order of Divine providence, to become the great-grandmother of the Messiah's most eminent type. In her, accordingly, we see a fitting representative of the elect Gentile Church, under the aspect in which that Church is so frequently presented to us in Scripture, as hearkening unto the voice of the celestial Bridegroom, forgetting' and forsaking, at His call, her own people and her father's house'-an aspect which is more fully developed in those devotional and prophetical portions of the Old Testament which exhibit Pharaoh's daughter, the renowned queen of Solomon, the 'peaceable' successor of the warlike David, under a similar relation to her antitype, the spouse of Christ, the daughter of the mystical Pharaoh of this world, all glorious within, of whom should spring a spiritual progeny of princes in all lands,' as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea-shore innumerable.

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Whilst then, in those unclean mothers of Judah whose names are recorded in this list as ancestresses of the Messiah, we see historical indications of the truth to which the sacrifices and rites of purification under the law pointed, and which the prophets inculcated, viz. that Messiah should take upon himself the sins of his family and nation, and deliver his people from them and their consequences, we infer at the same time, from the marked introduction into the record of the names of the two eminent Gentile proselytes, the spiritual character of the Messiah's person and office in this respect, and herein the universality of his work of salvation, as extending to a spiritual race of which he is the head and representative Father, even as Abraham was the father of the natural seed.

In connection with this survey of the structure of the genealogy, it is now easy to discern the congruity of the narration of the supernatural conception and the nativity, and of their circumstances, with the view of the Messiah and his office, which the ancient economy was intended to unfold to the mind of the faithful Israelite, not looking only for transitory promises.' The consideration, in their relation to the divine design, of the logical difficulties and discrepancies connected with the genealogy, cannot now be entered upon. In connection with the foregoing remarks, it only remains for us to point out that the general structure, and the details of the subsequent record of the nativity and its circumstances, correspond to the view which has been taken. The conception of Christ "by the Holy Ghost,' in the womb of a virgin mother connected with the genealogical race only by the purely external bond of

m Ps. xlv., &c.