PART VII.

CAP. V. 5- 11.

CORRUPTION of religious principle seldom or never fails to follow close upon immoral practice. Having declined from the path of virtuous and holy living, into the various kinds and degrees of dishonesty and profaneness, christians went on in the natural progress of degeneracy, and fell into sins more immediately affecting the character of their religion, and the worship and honour of God. These are represented in the next part of the vision,

5. Then the angel that talked with me went forth;

Or rather, went forward; for it is certain that he did not quit Zechariah, or remove far from him, since he still continued conversing with him and explained the ensuing symbols. He only went on, or moved forward, a short space, to meet the object presented to the prophet's

view, and to be ready at hand to do the acts, which, in the eighth verse, he is related to perform.

And said unto me, "Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this, which is going forth." 6. And I said, "What is it?" And he said, "This is the ephah which is going forth." The ephah was an Hebrew measure of capacity, containing something less than a Winchester bushel, with which, and with its uses, the prophet must have been well acquainted. The vessel however, which was here exhibited to him, it is certain from what follows, was of much greater size than a common ephah; yet being of the same shape and external appearance, perhaps also appearing to be of the same materials, as an ephah was usually made of, it is called by the same name. The angel himself distinguishes it from a common ephah by the use of the emphatic article; "This is THE ephah;" not any ephah, but that which goeth forth. If it be asked, whither does the ephah go? We may answer, over the face of all the land, over all Christendom; for those words are to be collected and understood from the description of the flying roll in the former part. That it does indeed so go forth, is plain, from the following words of the angel; for having, as we may reasonably

suppose, allowed Zechariah a short time to contemplate the object before him,

He said moreover, "This is their eye* in all 7. the land; and behold the cake of lead lifted up, and this, one woman sitting in the midst of the epbah."

The eye in Hebrew is sometimes, though not commonly, used for the aspect, colour, or surface of any object. In Exodus, x. 5, it is applied to the surface of the ground; in Numbers,

* The note being too long to be inserted here is placed at the end of this part.

The word лn is rejected by Archbishop Newcome and Dr. Blaney upon the authority of one manuscript; and admitted in its stead, on the authority of the Vulgate, Septuagint, and Arabic versions. The alteration rests on very infirm foundations; for the manuscript certainly does not read ; and it is very possible that the authors of the versions may have read n, though they have not rendered it literally. For since they supposed the words of the angel to end with the sixth verse, they could not give to this a literal rendering without losing hold, and almost sight, of all meaning. They therefore, in its stead, repeated from the beginning of the verse the word "behold ;" by which they did not alter, nor much obscure, the meaning of the passage, except so far as that effect has followed from breaking off the angel's speech. This indeed is the sole cause of all the difficulty attending the word n; for supposing the seventh verse to be spoken by the angel, it can no longer be objected, that a talent of lead is said to be a woman sitting in the midst of the ephah, and upon whom the talent was afterwards cast, which seems to be the reason with Dr. Blaney, for receiving the reading of the three versions, to which however, it must be observed, that the Syriac affords no

countenance.

xi. 7, the eye, or colour, of manna is compared to the eye, or colour, of bdellium: and in Ezekiel, i. 7, the sparkling appearance of the cherubim, to the eye, or colour, of burnished brass. All the three are evidently cases of metonymy, the eye being put for that, which the eye beholds. In the passage before us this sense of the word is transferred, by an easy metaphor, to that, which the understanding, the eye of the mind, discerns in surveying mankind; and it is probably this double process by metonymy and by metaphor, which has cast such a difficulty on the word, that the sense has escaped the notice of copyists, translators, and commentators. That, which the understanding discerns in surveying mankind, is their character, moral, political, or religious. Here, in conformity with the general purport and tendency of the vision, religious character is doubtless the thing alluded to. No grammatical difficulty can arise from the want of an antecedent to the possessive pronoun "their." It plainly and necessarily refers to the people, who are in possession of the land, that is, of Christendom*, or the Roman empire, then christian. This was so clearly seen by the author of the Syriac version, that he has expressed the antecedent instead of the possessive pronoun. * See Commentary, p. 302.

An ephah is merely a measure of capacity, and therefore, as in reality, so in vision, is not by itself a matter of any value or importance; but must derive its whole significancy and consequence from its contents. It is in allusion to these, that it is here distinguished as THE ephah. The eye, therefore, the aspect, resem blance, character of the people of Christendom must be determined by whatever the ephah may be found to contain. Accordingly this is next exhibited. The angel, as he continued his discourse, (for the following words are to be taken as a part, not of Zechariah's narrative, but of the angel's speech,) accompanied it by a corres pondent action. Lifting up the lid or cover of the ephah, which, we are told, was a cake of lead; "behold," said he, "the cake of lead* lifted up, and this, one woman, sitting in the midst of the ephah."

The inclosure of the woman within the ephah

*Our English version renders the word, a talent, as it frequently siguifies; and hence Archbishop Newcome observes, that the lid of the ephah weighed three thousand shekels, or fifteen hundred ounces, But the Hebrew word properly signifies a round flat cake; and it probably came to signify a talent from that weight being usually made in a flat round form. It is more likely to be used here in its primitive sense to denote a piece of lead, of a proper size and shape to be the cover of the ephah. A leaden cover for so large a vessel, as this ephah must have been, would greatly exceed the weight of a talent, taken at its largest estimation,