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The allusion to Egypt, which occurs twice over in this prophecy, has no doubt a design to direct us to the appropriate application of it, when the characters and circumstances alluded to, shall have been brought forward by the hand of time, as they have now in a great degree been. The spiritual tyrant is to smite the

says, to make any good sense of the present reading; and, he adds, that "Archbishop Secker (like all others) appears to have been at a loss for a probable interpretation." But if the yoke that is here prophesied of, and which is to be broken from off the neck of Israel, be, as I apprehend, the yoke of antichrist and the Roman captivity, under which the jews still groan, this is the very tyrant which hath usurped the throne of Christ, "the anointed of the Lord," as he is called, (Jer.-Lam, iv, 20. Dan, ix. 24,"to anoint the most HOLY." See Isaiah Ixi. 1; Ps. ii. 2; Luke iv. 18; Acts x. 38.) and as the very name XPIETO, unctus, or Christ, signifies. The yoke of antichrist is therefore to be destroyed, because of the anointing, or that the anointed and Holy One of Israel may succeed to his usurped throne, and reign over his ancients gloriously.

Bishop Lowth, indeed, applies this prophecy to Sennacherib, with whom it has probably nothing to do; being of a far more extensive reach, than to the time, and comparatively trivial events of that mighty despot's tyranny. This application seems to make rather than find the difficulty in it that is com plained of. It is not without reason that Isaiah is called "the evangelical prophet;" for he casts the vast range of his pro phetic eye most remote darkness of the last times. The

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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 Sennach erib, after the manner of Egypt, is the true scope of the prophecy, is confirmed by an

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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 peoplet of many nations in one religious league.

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

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 sur vivors 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

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* 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

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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 east; 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, begun by Rome pagan, and continued by Rome papal. But the meaning of the particular figures, time, and future events car alone with certainty explain.

Rev. xvi. 12.

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