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PROPHECIES OF MOSES CONCERNING THE JEWS.

THE twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, from the forty-eighth to the last verse, contains a series of predictions, the truth of which is attested by the history of the Jews, from their first settlement in Canaan to this very day. We shall show the connexion they had with succeeding prophecies, as well as point out the fulfilment of them.

Moses is larger in recounting the curses, than the blessings, as if he had a prescience of the people's disobedience; and foresaw that a larger portion and longer continuance of the evil, than of the good, would befal them.

We will begin with the forty-ninth verse:

"The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young."

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The prophet Jeremiah uses nearly the same language in chapter the 5th, and verse 15th: "Lo!

I will bring a nation upon you from far, Oh house of Israel! saith the Lord; it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say." He compares them in like manner to eagles, Lam. iv, verse 19, viz. “our pèrsecutors are swifter than the eagles of Heaven," &c.

Some writers have applied these prophecies to the Chaldeans; but this description is applicable with the greatest propriety to the Romans. They were truly brought from far, from the end of the earth: Vespasian and Adrian, the two great Emperors, and destroyers of the Jews, both came from commanding here in Britain. The Romans too, from the rapidity of their conquests, might very well be compared to eagles; and perhaps not without an allusion to the standard of the Roman army, which was an eagle; and their language was unknown.

Their enemies were also to take their cities:

"And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst throughout thy land." Deut. xxviii. 52.

We see in 2nd Kings xviii. 13, that Sennaccherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them.

And Nebuchadnezzar and his captain took and spoiled Jerusalem, burnt the city and temple, and broke down the walls of Jerusalem round about.

So likewise the Romans, as we may read in Josephus's history of the Jewish wars, demolished several fortified places, before they besieged and destroyed Jerusalem. And the Jews may truly be said to have trusted in their high and fenced walls; for they seldom ventured a battle in the open field. They confided in the strength, and situation of Jerusalem, as the Jebusites, the former inhabitants of the place, had done before them; insomuch that they said: "Who shall come down against us, or who shall enter into our habitation?" Jerusalem was indeed a very strong place, and wonderfully fortified, both by nature and by art, according to the description of Tacitus, as well as of Josephus; and yet how many times was it taken. It was taken by Shishak, king of Egypt, by Nebuchadnezzar, by Antiochus Epiphanes, by Pompey, by Sosius, and by Herod, before its final destruction by Titus.

In these sieges they were to suffer much, and especially from famine:

“In the straitness wherewith their enemies should distress them." verse 53.

And accordingly Samaria was besieged till an ass's head was sold for four-score pieces of silver; and in the last siege of Jerusalem, by Titus, there was a most terrible famine in the city. Josephus has given so melancholy an account of it, that we cannot read it without shuddering.

He says, the women snatched the food out of the mouths of their husbands, and even from their infants. So literally were the words of Moses fulfilled:

"The man's eye shall be evil towards his brother, and towards the wife of his bosom, and towards his children; because he hath nothing left him in the siege," &c. verse 54.

Nay it was expressly foretold, that not only the men, but the women should eat their own children.

Moses predicted the same thing, Levit. xxvi. 29: "Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons; and the flesh of your daughters, shall ye eat."

And in Deut. xxviii. 56:

"The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and tenderness, she shall eat her children, for want of all things, secretly, in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in thy gates.”

And it was fulfilled about 600 years after the time of Moses, when Samaria was besieged by the king of Assyria; when two women agreed to boil and eat their own sons. II Kings, vi. 28, 29.

It was again fulfilled 900 years after the time of Moses, in the siege of Jerusalem, before the Babylonish captivity; and Baruch thus expresses it: "The Lord hath made good his word which he pronounced against us, to bring upon us great plagues, such as never happened under the whole heaven, as it came to pass in Jerusalem; according to the things which were written in the law of Moses, that a man should eat the flesh of his own son, and the flesh of his own daughter."

And again it was fulfilled 1500 years after the time of Moses, in the last siege of Jerusalem, by Titus. And we read, in Josephus particularly, of a noble woman killing and eating her own child. One would have thought such horror and distress transcended imagination, much less that any person could have foreseen and foretold it; but it was literally fulfilled at different times, and at distant periods.

"And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven, for multitude." Deut. xxviii. 62.

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