2 Samuel 1:25-27

O Jonathan, slain in thy high places He says thy, for they were in Jonathan's country; and, had not his father disinherited him by his sins, in his dominions. Thus David's grief, which began with Jonathan, naturally ends with him. It is well known that we lament ourselves in the loss of our friends; and David was no way solicitous to conceal this circumstance. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan In the former part of this lamentation David celebrates Jonathan as a brave man, in the latter he laments him as a friend. And in this respect he had certainly as great obligations to him as ever man had to another. For, as he here observes, Jonathan's love to him was indeed wonderful, passing the love of women. And the weapons of war perished All military glory gone from Israel! “It may be the work of fancy in me,” says Dr. Delaney, “but to me, I own, this last stanza is the strongest picture of grief I ever perused. To my ear every line in it is either swelled with sighs, or broken with sobs. The judicious reader will find a break in the first line of it, very probably so left in the original, the writer not being able to find an epithet for Jonathan answering to the idea of his distress.” Our translators have supplied the interjection O! O Jonathan, stabbed in thy high places! “To conclude: Few have ever perused this lamentation with so little attention as not to perceive it evidently animated with a spirit truly martial and magnanimous! It is the lamentation of a brave man over brave men. It is, in one word, a lamentation equally pathetic and heroic. To this may be added, it is not less generous. For in the most noble spirit David passes over in entire silence all the ill-treatment which he, and his friend Jonathan on his account, had received from Saul; he does not make the most distant allusion to it, but seems through the whole song to strive to conceal every thing that might cast any reflection upon him.” The lines we promised are as follows:

“Mid the throng'd phalanx, where the battle press'd,

The bow of Jonathan, infuriate, burn'd;

Nor e'er, from slaughter's sanguinary feast,

The sword of Saul unsatiated return'd!

All eyes, all hearts, admired the lovely pair,

The princely parent and the pious son;

Whom life united, not divided are

In death, whose dire catastrophe is one.

With rapid pinion through th' aerial plain

The lightning eagle flies, but swifter they;

Strong is the monarch of the wood's domain,

But more their might indignant o'er the prey.

Ye weeping nymphs, attune the mourning lyre

To solemn strains of sympathetic wo;

Daughters of Israel, who the brave admire,

Bid for the brave the lay funereal flow!

‘Twas Saul returning from the battle's toils,

Triumphant chief! amidst his warriors bold,

Who crown'd your beauties with Philistia's spoils,

Who deck'd your charms with diamonds and gold,”

For the rest, see the Arminian Magazine for June 1811.