undefined; but if he were really not acquainted with this expectation, he merely delivered the divine oracle as communicated to him, without being aware of the object to whom it referred, and the want of perspicuity in this prediction gives great show of probability to such a presumption. Balaam might have been aware that he was proclaiming the future domination of some remarkable personage, by whom one more remarkable was adumbrated, without being informed of the specific characters of either more definitely than he has declared in the prophecy.

The images employed in it will be found singularly striking and discriminative.

There shall come a star out of Jacob.

A star denotes splendour. David was the wealthiest king of his time. He lived in great earthly pomp, and his court was distinguished for its magnificence. He wielded the mighty elements of temporal power. Although surpassed in all these particulars by his immediate successor Solomon, he might justly be compared to a star as diffusing the glories of his extensive jurisdiction over the nations whom he had subjugated. His alliance was courted and his influence dreaded. He was pre-eminently a star among the sovereigns of his time, and his reign certainly comprised the most important era of the political economy of the Jews, as he first established that complete supremacy in the land of Canaan, which the sovereigns who succeeded him maintained with various interrup

The

tions and forfeitures, until the degraded remnant of the stock of Abraham fell under the galling dominion of Rome, which abridged their national independence, and accelerated their final dispersion. The star is an object eminently brilliant, and fixed in an elevation at once sublime and imposing; but clouds may pass over it and mar its brightness, storms may eclipse its splendour, and the very mists which exhale from the earth may shroud its lustre. career of David, bright as it appeared, was overclouded with disaster. The splendours of his court were dimmed by domestic troubles and political vexations. The glories of his reign were overcast by the sad influence of his own unchaste passions. Sorrows overtook him, cares crowded upon him, rebellion disturbed his. repose, and filial disobedience opened the floodgates of sorrow upon his heart; nevertheless his reign was the most illustrious in the Hebrew annals. His conduct before he ascended the throne of Israel was that of a great and good man. Towards Saul, during that sovereign's life, he was forbearing and magnanimous, and at his death, treated his memory with honour instead of ignomy, ordering the Amalekite to be put to death who confessed that he had dispatched the Lord's anointed.* He avenged the death of Ishbosheth, Saul's son, who had disputed his claim to the throne, and having caused the murderers of that rash prince to be slain, expelled the Jebusites from Jerusalem, and took up his

• 2 Sam. i. 2—15.

abode in that sacred city. He defeated the Philistines, redeemed the ark of which they had obtained possession, brought it to Jerusalem, and deposited it "in his place, in the midst of the tabernacle that David had pitched for it."* Having freed his country from the Philistines, he subdued the Moabites, treating them with a severity for which we are neither perfectly acquainted with the motives, nor indeed with the circumstances of his persecution of this unhappy people. He subjugated all Syria, made an expedition as far as the Euphrates, and conquered the eastern Edomites in the valley of Salt. He next routed the Ammonites with great slaughter, finally took Rabbah, their capital, which he plundered, and subjected the inhabitants to the most grievous punishments. "He brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln; and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon."+ These signal successes finally established him upon the throne of Israel, which he transmitted to his successor with an extent of dominion that well entitled him to be distinguished among the eminent of the earth.

The greatness of a sovereign is very much shown in the talents of those who are subordinate to him, and David had the wisdom to select men of the greatest abilities, who contributed mainly to the almost uninterrupted success of his arms.

Joab was one of the most eminent generals of his age, though he was, at the same time, imperious, cruel, and remorseless.

David was unquestionably a person of great capacity and courage, which were both strongly exhibited in the early part of his career. His devotion to God, though interrupted by occasional impulses of licentious passion, was sincere and ardent, and perhaps there is nowhere to be found a more beautiful example of resignation to the divine will than that afforded by this celebrated king upon the death of the child borne to him by the wife of Uriah the Hittite, whom he had so criminally seduced, and whose husband he had still more criminally abandoned to destruction, in order that he might espouse his guilty relict. The character of David, take it altogether, politically, morally, and spiritually, stands prominent among those of the most renowned Hebrew worthies. He was appropriately compared to a star by the prophet of Pethor, under all the circumstances of his chequered, but, nevertheless, illustrious life; and the comparison will bear a still closer application, when we consider that he went down to the grave in a mature old age, in the full hope of that joyful immortality to which he shall rise again at the last day, and, taking his place among the everlasting luminaries in heaven, shine in undimmed brightness there, through the endless duration of eternity.

It was from the race of David, we shall remember, that Scripture intimates the Messiah should spring. He is called emphatically "the

seed of David," because David was the first distinguished king of the Hebrews, and of the tribe of Judah, from which the Emmanuel was to proceed. Saul, having degraded himself by his multiplied follies, the crown was transferred to a more worthy object, who rendered himself illustrious by leading to victory the armies of the living God, and by signally chastising his enemies, the blasphemers of his sacred name.

Daniel has employed the figure of a star to denote persons raised to supreme authority. "And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven, and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground and stamped upon them."* St. John uses the same figure in the Revelations: "The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches."

It is perfectly clear that this metaphor, as employed by the bard of Mesopotamia, applies literally to David, although it may, in a secondary sense, have an ulterior reference to the Messiah, the external splendour of David's reign being more appropriately adumbrated under the figure of a luminous orb, than the temporal homeliness of the Saviour's. The one was attended, through the greater part of his public life, with all the " pomp and circumstance" of worldly royalty; the other, throughout the entire period of his, "had not where to lay his head." The one wore the diadem of earthly sovereigns, glittering with gems, and displaying the rarest ingenuity of the craftsman; the other bore on his lacerated and bleeding + Chapter i. 20.

Daniel viii. 10.