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or "plucked and torn." The Seventy ask, "Who is beyond it?" According to the Vulgate, it is "a terrible" race, and "beyond it there is no other." Here the sentence assumes an affirmative, there an interrogatory form. In our English Bible the people is "terrible from" its beginning hitherto." Our "meted and trodden-down nation" is a "hopeless" one in the Greek, an "expecting" one in the Latin ecclesiastical copies! Nay, "the rivers" which in the latter "have spoiled the land" are in the former the subjects of a colonial prophecy; since "all the country (bordering on) them is to be inhabited.”

Let us then diffidently endeavour to find our way through the thorns and brambles of this intricate labyrinth.

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Asp, the participle pual, or, according to some, the passive kal, of, is one of the most plastic and ductile expressions in the Hebrew language, an attempt to ascertain its meaning here will be taken in good part. Its primary meaning is to seize, or lay hold of. Apply it to matter, and it stretches, draws out, hardens, strengthens, and scatters it. Apply it to time, and it denotes long duration. It plucks the hair; takes possession of an inheritance; bends a bow; blows a horn; wields the sceptre; and snatches away the mighty.

Nor is , polished, or made smooth, an epithet easily disposed of.. Ezekiel's awful description of the sword prepared for slaughter might be consulted with advantage. It was not only "sharpened,", but "burnished,", "that it might glitter," (lampeggiare, Ital.);" oúrov ὅπως γένῃ εἰς στίλβωσιν, xxi. 15. (Alex. 10.)

To harden is, nevertheless, the primary meaning of the Syriaca, and Gesenius seems to prefer the Arabic signification of "fortis, validus, strenuus;" so that would be “ a valiant nation." Daniel, however, uses the participle in the sense of plucked out; and it is not unlikely that both terms in this clause of Isaiah's little poem had a cosmetic import. We have Jerome's authority for convellere in the first instance, and Ezekiel's in the second (xxix. 18, "Every shoulder is bald, or smoothed") for the kindred acceptation of peeled or polished. We therefore formerly hazarded the following translation

"A people plucked and smoothed," or "painted."

For and are nothing more than dialectic variations of the verb to smooth, spread over, anoint, or paint, in Syriac. And Pliny will have it that the custom of ruddling the gods of the west with an ointment of vermilion (cinnabar or miltos) came from "beyond the rivers of Cush." In his time, the Roman Jupiter only received a circular patch of the sacred pomatum (or rouge) on triumphal occasions; but "Ethiopian grandees" painted themselves red from tip to toe, because-" their gods were of that colour." * We learn from Herodotus,

"Enumerat authores Verrius quibus credere sit necesse Jovis ipsius simulacri faciem diebus festis minio illini solitum, triumphantumque corpora; sic Camillum triumphasse.... et hodiè id expeti constat Ethiopum populis, totosque eo tingi porceres, huncque ibi Deorum simulachris colorem esse." Thus Verrius and Pliny give the lie to the Castillan proverb-" Sobre NEGRO no hay tintura"-black won't dye.

that Ethiopian corpses were embellished with a coating of painted plaster, so as to resemble the living, iii. 24. [Indeed the word has passed into other languages; for Homer mentions the μáλ0a with which his countrymen smeared their ships, and both this and μíλrog resemble the Syriac root; whence Jeremiah's e, xliii. 9, mortar, and the Italian malta, mire.]*

But there are stronger reasons than these in favour of Doederlein's hypothesis that the were a diminutive and bandy-legged race. "Mihi," says this commentator, "alim suspicio suborta, annon possit verti gens distorta cruribus. Græcis quidem διεστραμμένοι sunt qui pedes habent incurvos." He then refers to Pausanias's description of the ark of Cypselus, in which aides diaσrpaμμévoi nocas are noticed. That these little crook-legged fellows, the pigmies, have often been confounded with a formidable tribe of Joktanites who occupied the land of the Tziltzal flies, and whose principal occupation seems to have consisted in flcating down the Astaboras and the Nile with drinking-jars, under their palm or rush-rafts, can scarcely be disputed. Nonnosus, a voyager whose testimony Photius alleges, had met with them between the Homerites and the Auxumitæ. They are the Pigmy Nubians of Hesychius.§ As the black soil which hatches our gad-fly reaches "from the mountains of Abyssinia northward to the confluence of the Nile and Astaboras,"|| it is no wonder that the learned Samuel Bochart should have settled Aristotle's pigmies on the banks of the latter stream. This view is confirmed by the grotesque ornaments of an ancient vase. Here we see the little crook-legged Nubians floating on a raft buoyed up with tiers of drinking-jars.

МАНІ, or

We are aware of the objections to which this rendering of the term Tp might expose us. Indeed, at one time, they were our own. The "cubit-boys," against whom the crane's auxiliary, Sir Thomas Brown, like another Hercules, once solemnly fought so successful a battle, were but picturesque emblems of the overflowing of the great river. They were merely the sixteen cubits of the Nile's prosperous elevation-"the sixteen Troglodyte little men, who catch crocodiles, and play childish pranks round good old father Nilus in Philotratus's Book of Images." Some might ask what is there so "terrible" in a (2777, mardach,†† or) mannikin? But the Jewish allies on the Astaboras, notwithstanding the acknowledged brevity of their

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Analogous terms will be found in the medieval dialects of southern Europe: such are, for instance, O. French MAIL, clay, cement, marn; and that puzzling term invariably denoting the salt pastures of diminutive grass, or sea-border land, in the Norman isles, MELL and MIELLE. Smooth, slippery, bald, soft, wet, miry, filthy; stains, spots; are, in general grammar, expressed by the same term. Moall is the geographical Bas-Breton equivalent for bald, and MELL or MIELLE might be compared to the Hebrew. The Irish Millte, marred or spoiled, and SAL, filthy, recall the Greek μíλTos and Lat. Sal.

+ Doederlein in Is. xviii. apud Rosenmulleri Schol. in Vet. Test. viii. 598.
Nonnos. apud Photium. Tmem. 3.
Bruce's Travels in Abyssinia.

§ Apud Bochart. Geogr. Sacr. col.225.

Nili nomine Astaboram intellige, quem plerique veteres Nili ramum esse crediderunt. Bochart in Aristot. Hist. Anim. viii. 12.

** Jablonsky. Panth. Egypt. iv. 1, 17.

++ For MORDECAI seems to have been the Persian nickname of queen Esther's LITTLE uncle.

stature, were any thing but literal pigmies; and small dimensions are by no means incompatible with every attribute of human excellence.

מין הוא והלאה

A. E. From their beginning hitherto.
Vulg. Beyond whom there is no other.
Who is beyond it?

Sept.

The English translators, like Rabbi Solomon, apply

to duration,

not to situation.* The Seventy and Vulgate overlook the notion of time, and prefer that of geographical extent. Might we not read

"A terrible people

From hence and beyond,"

Præter

that is, near and far, at home and abroad? Jerome seems to have copied from a text which had ; and the interrogatory term in the Greek might be explained by reading [m]. hunc nulla non [est?] We refer to a nearly parallel instance, 1 Sam. xx. 37: ("Is not," or) "Behold the arrow (is) far beyond thee (?)!"—literally, "from thee, and beyond” thee.

"A people of measuring lines,

And of trampling under feet,

Whose land the rivers have subdued."

Though inclined to adopt the agricultural exposition of this triplet, it is not our wish to exclude the figurative adaptations involved in the literal and primary sense. River borderers, whom a yearly deluge compelled to restore their landmarks, by means of "measuring lines," or grammiko-metry, and who "sowed their bread upon the waters," trampling it afterwards under their feet, are also represented as "a terrible people." They had often measured their captives with "the line of destruction ;" and the just penalty of their atrocities would have been a fresh invasion by the Assyrian tyrant of tyrants. Rabbi Solomon of Lunel explainst by ; and piously observes, that "because of the people's iniquity, God took vengeance (upon them), measure for measure."‡

We have thus made a feeble effort to diminish the philological difficulties which arrest, at every step, the modest reader of this beautiful little portion of Isaiah's inspired volume. A word on its probable topic will now be expected. But our intention is simply to confirm the early protestant belief that its argument was "THE COALITION OF THE KINGS OF EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA AGAINST SENNACHERIB."

Isaiah, rapt in a vision, sees "Tirhaka," summoned by the fluviatile messengers whom he so well describes, and who have made him "afraid," "marching at the head of an immense army, to the relief of his Egyptian ally. Tirhaka is resolved at once to cross the desert, and so to fall directly upon the Assyrians. Sennacherib, disturbed at the news, leaves Pelusiam."§ "And God sent a pestilential distemper upon

Solomon says " Ab eo die quo electus est ut sit populus, et deinceps." Ed. Breithaupt, iii. 114.

+ Irenæus puzzled his Greek fancy for an explanation of the Gnostic Syrian for. mula of baptism or redemption : it is line upon line, or the sacred perpendicular T (), the sign of immortality!-See Father Nicol. Caussin on Horapoler, p. 183. Ibid. Josephus.

his army, and a hundred and fourscore and five thousand, with their captains and generals, were destroyed. So THE KING FLED WITH

THE REST OF HIS FORCES TO HIS OWN KINGDOM, AND TO HIS CITY NINEVEH."*

All this and no more than this-we think we distinctly read in "the volume of the book." In verses 4, 5, 6, the mode of execution is explained. "Like a white heat dazzling with splendour, like a dewy cloud in the midst of harvest," Jehovah " keeps still, and looks on in HIS STATION." But God, in the very next poem, “rideth upon a swift cloud." These appearances are but the Simoom in embryo, the ordinary forerunners of the Demon of the South's arrival. It is Aso, the Ethiopian Queen-our Silurian Cruel Black Fate, or Death-the Deity tanned with Ethiopian suns " of Arnobius, and Valerius Flaccus's

"Nocti concolor alas

Nimborum cum prole NOTUS."+

It is the evil faculty personified in the gad-fly, TZIL-TZAL and BAALZEBUB. It is the discordant and infernal type of the "winged TZILTZAL," or sistrum, though sometimes figured as a cat, a griffin, and a harpy. "And the Lord Jehovah shall blow the trumpet, and shall go with no, whirlwinds of the south!" Zech. ix. 4. Hence the signals of slaughter-THE ENSIGN and THE TRUMPET:

"As soon as THE ENSIGN is lifted up on the mountains, look on!

As soon as THE TRUMPET is blown, hear ye!"

But the period of the Typhonian fiend's manifestation is May; and this is the time of the year alluded to by the prophet.

"Before the harvest, when the bud is perfect,

And the flower shall have become a sour grape,

He shall both cut off the branches with pruning hooks,
And take away (or cut off) the stems."

"Radices vitium," or 66 whom we so often consult;

plants de vigne," adds the French rabbi as if the prophet had said,

66

"HE SHALL SLAY KINGS AND PRINCES AND RULERS,
AND DESTROY GOG'S AUXILIARY TROOPS!" ‡

We may then naturally conclude with the inference, that "when the fowls of the mountains and the beasts of the earth" had “ summered and wintered" over the dead heaps of these Assyrian scorners, "the crooklegged and painted people," who were "terrible near and far "-Egypt and Judah's ancient allies-" brought a present unto the Lord of hosts, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts-the Mount Zion."§

ON SAINTS'-DAY SERVICES.

SIR,-In your Number for August, T. M. applies for information relative to the observance of the saints'-day services falling upon a Sunday. In his inquiry, he is desirous to know whether, "if there is no actual rule in the Prayer Book to guide us in this case, there may not be some ancient custom of the Church, which may have almost the force of a rule?"

Berosus apud Josephum.

Argonaut. i. 11.

Solomon Lun, in Isa. xviii. Errat. p. 614, last line but one: for "between," read "beyond."

The following is from the Rom. Missal, which I remember to have seen some years ago, and which will furnish your correspondent individually, as well as the clergy generally, with an useful direction and obvious rule.

Sundays, the services for which take place of that for any festival occurring on the same day :-First Sunday in Advent, first Sunday in Lent, Palm Sunday, Easter day, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday.

Festivals which supersede any Sunday not in the foregoing list:Epiphany, St. Philip and St. James, (May 1st,) St. John the Baptist, (June 24,) St. Peter, (June 29,) Nativity, (Dec. 25.)

Sundays which supersede that of any festival not in the above list: -2d, 3d, 4th in Advent; Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima Sundays; 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th Sundays in Lent.

From this classification the following rule is observable :-From Advent to Christmas, and from Septuagesima to Easter (inclusive), and on Whitsunday and Trinity Sunday, the Sunday service takes precedence of the festival; at all other times, the festival takes precedence of the Sunday.

CONSEQUENCES OF THIS RULE.

St. Matthias, (February 24,) the Annunciation, (March 25,) St. Andrew, (Nov. 30,) St. Thomas, (Dec. 21,) always yield to the Sunday; the two former always falling between Septuagesima and Easter Sundays; the two latter, in Advent.

Some Festivals will, in some years, give precedence; in others, yield to the Sunday. Thus, the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Purification, may happen on Septuagesima or Sexagesima Sunday, in which case, the Sunday precedes; or they may fall on a Sunday after Epiphany, in which case the Sunday gives way.

The Annunciation may happen in Passion Week, or that of St. Mark fall on Easter Monday or Tuesday, or St. Barnabas on Monday or Tuesday in Whitsun week. In all these cases, the saints' day ought to give way. Flintshire.

J. H.

CHURCH SOCIETIES.

MR. EDITOR,-No reflecting churchman can be attentive to the repeated appeals that are made to him on behalf of different church objects, without being satisfied of the propriety and importance of their various claims, and of the necessity of union among churchmen, in order that those claims may be adequately met. The cry of more churches, more ministers, more schools, more Bibles and books, more missionaries, is resounding from every quarter; and though individuals among us may have contributed according to their power (perhaps beyond their power) to the different institutions which are ministering to the Church's wants, yet still, comparatively speaking, little has hitherto been done, and much, very much indeed, remains to be accomplished. Among the different wants of the Church, it is extremely difficult to single out and determine which class has a prior claim to relief; if, indeed, any christian could wish to see one class relieved,

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