communicated and supplied through the ministry of persons duly appointed and ordained to that end. The truth of the above mentioned declarations, as really proceeding from the Almighty, is testified by an appeal to the performance of a promise shortly to take effect. 1. And the angel that talked with me came

again, and waked me as a man that is wakened out of his sleep; and said unto me, what seest thou?

At this period of the vision, the interpreting angel, who in the third part had quitted the side of Joshua to attend and witness, perhaps also to superintend, the measuring of Jerusalem, and was dispatched with a message to the measurer, returned and found the prophet deeply musing on the important but deeply mysterious emblems, which had lately been set before his eyes. The angelic minister now, we may suppose, fully instructed in the counsels of God respecting the church, as having witnessed the execution of the orders, with which he was intrusted, is able to unfold, as far as he is permitted to do it, the signification of the images which are next presented to Zechariah's view. He therefore roused the prophet from his reverie, and by his question called his attention to another set of emblems, which are described to us in the words of his reply to the angel.

2. And I said*, I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of gold, and a bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps upon it; seven and sevent! Pipes are there to the seven 3. lamps, which are upon the top of it; and two olive-trees beside it, one on the right side of the bowl and the other on the left side 4. thereof. So I answered and spake unto the angel that talked with me, saying, what are these my Lord? And the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, knowest thou not what these be? And I said, no my Lord.

5.

*The printed Hebrew copies read, "And he said:" but the reading adopted here by our English translators, and by all critics is supported by the Keri, by the majority of ancient manuscripts, and by the ancient versions, that is to say, it is beyond all question the true reading.

In thus rendering the Hebrew words yaw yaw I have taken the in a distributive sense, making it divide the lamps of the candlestick into a pair of sevens, in conformity with the idiom of the Hebrew language. See the examples cited by Tympius in his annotations on Noldius de particulis, No. 902. In Genesis, vii. 2, 3, we find the number fourteen distributed in this manner, but without the Vau; “Of f every clean beast thou shalt take to thee seven, seven, and of fowls seven, seven," which are distributed, seven to each of the sexes, as it is expressed, "the male and his female." In 1 Kings, viii. 65, we have an instance exactly in point; fourteen days are there distributed into a pair of sevens, and that with the Vau: "Aud Solomon held a great feast and all Israel with him, seven days and seven days, even fourteen days." And in order, as it should seem, to fix the attention of the reader on this distribution, it is said in the following verse, that "on the eighth day he sent the people

It appears from the tenth verse, that the stone sculptured with seven eyes was yet present: consequently this part of the vision is a continuation of the latter part of the former, not passing on to other times or to a different dispensation, but intended only to explain what had been before exhibited, by presenting it to view under other emblems of a grander description, of more extensive application, or of more striking significancy.

away" though it must certainly mean the fifteenth day, the eighth day of the second septenary, that is to say, the day after its close. In 2 Chronicles, vii, the same festival is recorded; and in verse 9, we are informed, that the distribution was made into seven days for the feast of dedication and seven more for the feast of tabernacles. Accordingly here the fourteen lamps are distributed into seven and seven; seven for one side and seven for the other side of the candlestick. I may also cite the authority of our English translators for rendering the Vau in a distributive sense; but I can concur with them no farther, for they have rendered the words by a construction so difficult and perplexed, that no example of a like one can be produced; nor will any one, I suppose, adhere to it, if a tolerable meaning can be made out in an easier way. This is what I have attempted. Dr. Blaney also has removed this grammatical difficulty, by disjoining the pronominal affix from the preposition and annexing it, as the emphatic article, to the following word; whence he produces the following rendering; "Over the seven (lamps) also seven pipes.' But this mode of connecting one clause of a sentence with another, by Vau in the middle of the latter, is certainly very unusual; and the construction is farther liable to objection, as it throws great difficulties in the way of attaining to a clear conception of the symbol, as will be shewn at length in the commentary. I feel therefore no scruple in proposing the new rendering and the new division of the sentence given above, the advantages of which will afterwards appear.

The principal object that met the eyes of Zechariah, was a candelabrum, a candlestick or lamp-bearer, entirely of gold, consisting of a tall upright shaft, surmounted by a bowl, and of a number of branches, each of which supported a lamp, springing out of it, as boughs from the trunk of a tree, not however indiscriminately or all round, but only on two sides, each being opposite to each. A candlestick of like form was placed in the tabernacle of Moses and temple of Solomon, having "six branches* going out of the sides thereof; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side thereof and three

* Exodus, xxv. 32, and following, xxxvii. 17, and following. In Solomon's temple there were ten candlesticks, as appears from 1 Kings, vii. 49, 2 Chronicles, iv. 7. But Josephus, in Antiq. Jud. b. 8, cap. 3, § 7, tells us, that although Solomon made a vast number of candlesticks, μupias, according to the commandment of Moses, yet that he dedicated ONE only for the holy place, εξ ων μιαν ανέθηκεν εις τον vaov, that it might be lighted every day agreeably to the law. Abijah, king of Judah, also, in 2 Chronicles, xiii. 11, where he is extolling the fidelity and piety of his own subjects, in opposition to the idolatry of the Israelites, and particularizing the instances in which they kept the charge of the Lord, mentions the candlestick and its lamps, as one only. Perhaps the disagreement may best be reconciled by supposing, that though ten candlesticks were placed in the sanctuary, one only was lighted. At any rate it is plain, that the ten were regarded, as being only one in point of use and signification; so that the increase of number had not, and was not intended to have, any other effect, than to augment the grandeur of the sanctuary. In like manner and to the same end, several other utensils, which were single in the tabernacle, were ten in the temple. 2 Chronicles, iv. 6, 8.

branches of the candlestick out of the other side thereof:" and on each of these was a lamp, with a central one on the summit of the shaft.

Zechariah, having noticed and described the objects before him, inquired the meaning of the mystic imagery, "what are these my Lord?" that is, what are they intended to represent? for what they actually were, he plainly saw. The reply is made by another question, reproving the prophet for his ignorance in much the same terms, as those, in which our Lord rebuked Nicodemus upon a like occasion. "Knowest thou not what these be?" as if it were a reproach and shame to him to be slow of heart in the apprehension of such intelligible symbols. And truly it was to be expected, that Zechariah, a master in Israel, a priest and a prophet, studious of scripture, familiar with types, versed in prophetic language, and with a mind illuminated by the preceding emblems, should readily have penetrated the veil of a figure, which had been familiar to the Jews from the time of Moses. The leniency of the angel's rebuke, under such circumstances, would be as remarkable, as the dulness of the prophet, if we did not collect from Zechariah's words, as he enumerates the objects presented to his view, that not only was the emblem attended by some extraordinary accompa