subject people with the rod of his imperious supremacy and the enslaving of the conscience, by a second Egyptian bondage; and God is to break his yoke, and vindicate the liberty of his own people also after the manner of Egypt, and by some notable act of power, as when his rod was lifted up by Moses to divide the sea, that the people might escape, but the tyrant meet his destruction.

That this, and not any action of Sennacherib, after the manner of Egypt, is the true scope of the prophecy, is confirmed by an

application of his majestic prophecies, in a literal way, to trivial events close at hand, and to a character but of a secondary importance in the sacred story, who appears there chiefly as a type of another tyrant, whose "little finger was of greater weight than the loins" of Sennacherib, is not doing full justice to this sublime prophet. There certainly is a character, with whose afflictive and “perpetual stroke," (Is. xiv. 6,) upon both the jewish and the christian church, this prophesy has a much closer correspondence; whose yoke, as it is at large described in other places, is a truly Egyptian bondage, and whose end will resemble that of Pharoah, which Sennacherib's, by the paricide of his two sons, did not. His rod also is properly upon the sea, or mingled people of many nations in one religious league.

Rev. xvii. 15. + Jer. xxv. 20, 24; Ezek, xxx, 5ẹ

other which coincides with it in 'the same sense, but which cannot possibly be applied except to times and events very remote. Speaking of the very latest times of the christian dispensation, when a pure worship of God and sincere practice of righteousness shall prevail throughout the world, the prophet proceeds to relate an event which is to take place about that time; which is often the meaning of the phrase " in that day." "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again THE SECOND TIME, to recover the REMNANT of his people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt."* Assyria and the other names of countries here enumerated, as places from whence the survivors of the jews are to be brought back into Judea, are only figurative names, which the necessary obscurity of prophecy of a very extensive reach (like a history written by anticipation) required to be so concealed. It would have had an awkward effect to have named

"This part of the chapter contains a prophecy which remains yet to be fulfilled."-LOWTH,

countries by their modern names, ages before any such names existed. But it is certain that the jews are never spoken of by the term the remnant, but with a view to the time of their restoration; when as St Paul and Isaiah agree, a remnant shall be saved: and moreover, it is expressly said that this is the second time that God will work a deliverance and an Exodus for Israel, in the majesty of his power,-for he will set his band to it with energy divine, and demonstratively prove the wondrous act his own.

"And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble THE OUTCASTS of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah, from the four corners of the earth. And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian Sea, and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven

* Bishop Lowth says, here is a plain allusion to the passage of the Red Sea, which was so divided by a mighty wind.—But the circumstances here mentioned all relate to Egypt; the River Nile, which had anciently seven streams, and the Island of Delta, which resembles a tongue, The mystical Egypt (Rev. xi. 8,) I rather apprehend is here meant, and the de

streams, and make men go over dry shod. And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left from Assyria,-like as it was to Israel in the day that he came out of the land of Egypt.”

In the Revelations† we find the sixth plague, by which God (in a striking analogy with the plagues of Egypt) overthrows the kingdom of Antichrist, the modern Pharoah, is the drying up of the river Euphrates, to admit a passage over to the kings of the cast; which it seems, without some providential or miraculous interposition in their favor, they could not have made good. This event, of whatever nature it be, is soon followed by important consequences; and the ruin of the spiritual tyrant and his power presently ensues. But in all likelihood neither the real Euphrates, in the latter prophecy, nor the

liverance of the people of God out of that long captivity, be gun by Rome pagan, and continued by Rome papal. But the meaning of the particular figures, time, and future events can alone with certainty explain.

+ Rev. xvi. 12.

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real Nile, and Egypt in the former, are any otherwise concerned in these events than as figures; under which are couched ideas that could not be expressed under emblems less obscure, and which seem, from the frequency with which they are made use of upon the same occasion, to have a peculiar force and propriety in them. For in the fifty-first chapter of the same prophet, there is yet again such another allusion to the ancient miraculous transit through the sea on dry ground, and applied again to the very same purpose, to express the return of the ransomed of Jehovah to their own land. God is reminded of that amazing display of his power in Egypt, and at the sea; and is called to arise once again, the second time, to rescue his suppliant people in the very crisis of their fate." Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake,-as in the ancient days, in the generations of old.-Art thou not it that hath cut in pieces Rahab,* (Egypt,)

* That by Rahab Egypt must be meant, is clear, from the context; as the whole is a continued allusion to God's mighty power displayed upon Pharoah, or the Dragon, as he is express

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