He hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof. He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: He hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, And he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.

He hath bent his bow like an enemy:

He stood with his right hand as an adversary,

And slew all that were pleasant to the eye

In the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion:

He poured out his fury like fire.

The Lord was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, He hath swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong

holds,

And hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden:

He hath destroyed his places of the assembly:

The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion,

And hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priests.

The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary,

He hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; They have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of solemn feast.

CHAPTER XIX.

The prophetic ode continued.

THE measure of calamity is not filled up, the arrows of almighty vengeance are not yet exhausted. The poet continues his strain of prophetic retribution on the ungrateful and disobedient Israelites:

I said, I would scatter them into corners,

I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men.

In this passage we have the idea excited of consternation prevailing to such an extent among the unhappy inhabitants of Judæa, that they should hide themselves in the most secret and inaccessible places from the presence of a desolating enemy who would cause so complete a destruction, that scarcely any memorial of them should remain-that they should be all but exterminated. It is worthy of remark how skilfully Moses varies the subjects of his descriptions, and yet keeps them all in strict dependency upon each other, never rupturing the harmonious concatenation of parts, so as to disturb the integral unity. In several preceding clauses, we have seen the arrows in full operation. The various inflictions to be dealt upon God's disobedient people are declared

in the previous passage with fearful distinctness and earnestness of expression. In the couplet last quoted, the effects of those visitations are presented. Great terror and consternation seize upon the revolted inhabitants of the land-upon those who inherited it by promise; the degenerate descendants of that righteous forefather to whom this promise was made,-causing them to run to the gloomy recesses of forests and of caverns; having less dread of wild beasts than of enemies of their own kind. God would have at once extirpated them but for the reasons expressed in the two couplets next to be considered: the time, however, finally arrived when their social joys were banished; when their constitution was subverted and they were dispersed among the nations, no longer a people favoured of Jehovah, and proposing laws to the whole world.

To that condition of things which followed the destruction of their capital, the prophet, I think, here incidentally points; and how fully have his denunciations of future temporal retribution been realized in the subsequent history of this remarkable people! Even now they may be said to be "scattered into corners," for in every civilized country, they are rather tolerated than admitted among its community to the privileges of citizens. They possess not the immunities of the native born, but are looked upon as aliens, and the brand of scorn, though no longer of persecution, is yet upon them. The threat of an irritated and outraged God, uttered upwards of three thousand years ago, is still in operation. The remembrance of the sons

of Jacob, as a nation pre-eminently distinguished for spiritual privileges and political power, has ceased from among men.

Those awful consequences which followed the revolt of the Jews from that Deity who had so marvellously befriended them, have been detailed, with appalling minuteness, by Josephus, in his Jewish war, to which I again refer.* The calamities which befel them during the memorable siege of Jerusalem by Titus, are such as to show us, with the most convincing force of demonstration, how fearful a thing it is "to fall into the hands of the living God.”

"But as for the more wealthy, it proved the same thing to them whether they quitted or remained in the city; for all such persons were put to death under the pretence that they were going to desert, but it was in reality in order that the robbers might obtain what they possessed. The frenzy of the seditious did also increase with their famine, and both these miseries were daily aggravated; for there was no corn seen anywhere, but the robbers immediately searched for it in private houses: if they found any, they tormented the owners for having denied that they possessed it; and if they found none, they tormented them the more under the idea that it was somewhere concealed. Whether they really had any or not, the robbers presumed, from the appearance of their unhappy victims, who, if they were in tolerably good condition, they at once concluded to be in no want of food, but if

* The unlearned reader is referred to Whiston's translation,

they appeared lean and ill favoured, their tyrants made no further search, thinking it useless to kill persons whom they imagined must evidently soon die from want of nourishment. There were indeed many who sold all that they had for one measure of grain, the richer of wheat, the poorer of barley. This being done, they shut themselves up in the innermost apartments of their houses to eat what they had thus obtained. Some devoured without grinding it, in consequence of their extreme hunger, others converted it into bread, according as necessity or fear dictated. No table was spread for a regular meal, but the unhappy wretches snatched the bread out of the fire half baked, and devoured it voraciously.

"It was in truth a sight to draw tears from our eyes, to see that while the stronger had more food than they required, the weaker were everywhere lamenting the want of it. But famine overmasters all other passions, and it is destructive of nothing so much as of modesty. Now what ought to have been reverenced was despised; so much so that children tore the food from their fathers' mouths as they were eating it; but what was still more pitiable, mothers were seen to do this to their helpless babes. When, moreover, those most dear to them were perishing before their eyes, they were not ashamed to deprive them of that which might have preserved their tender lives. While, however, they obtained food in this unnatural way, they were observed by the seditious, who rushed in upon them, and took from them by force what they