CXXIX. Out of some deadly peril Israel looks for deliverance to the righteousness of Jehovah, which from the childhood of the race has repeatedly manifested itself in help and deliverance. As the cord of bondage was cut in Egypt so will it be cut again, and the same shame and confusion overtake the... [ Continue Reading ]
MANY A TIME. — Or more literally, _much._ (See margin.) FROM MY YOUTH. — Here, of course, not the youth of a person, but of the nation. The poet glances back even to the Egyptian bondage. (See Hosea 2:15, “as in the days of her youth, and as in the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt;” c... [ Continue Reading ]
FURROWS. — The Hebrew word only occurs once besides, in 1 Samuel 14:14, where the margin renders as here, _furrow_ — a rendering which plainly _there_ is not intelligible. “Half a furrow of an acre of land,” as a space in which twenty men were killed, gives no clear idea to the mind. But Dr. J. G. W... [ Continue Reading ]
THE LORD IS RIGHTEOUS. — This expression of faith, introduced without any conjunction, is itself a revelation of the deeply-rooted religion of Israel. CORDS. — Literally, _cord._ As in Psalms 124:7, the net was broken and the bird escaped, so here the cord binding the slave (comp. Psalms 2:3) is se... [ Continue Reading ]
WHICH WITHERETH AFORE IT GROWETH UP. — This clause, with its Aramaic colouring, probably contains a textual error. The context seems certainly to require the meaning “before it is plucked up,” and many scholars get this meaning out of the Hebrew verb used elsewhere of “plucking off a shoe” and “draw... [ Continue Reading ]
This harvest scene is exactly like that painted in Ruth 2:4, and the last line should be printed as a return greeting from the reapers.... [ Continue Reading ]