er my flock, and I deliver
them out of all the places, where they have been scattered in the day
of clouds and of darkness. And I bring them out from the nations, and
gather them from the countries, and bring them to their land, and feed
them upon the mountains of Israel, in the valleys, and in all the
dwelling places of the land."--A spiritless clinging to the letter has,
here too, led several interpreters to suppose, that the Prophet had
here in view merely the return from the Babylonish captivity, and
perhaps, also, the blessings of the times of the Maccabees, besides and
in addition to it. Altogether apart from the consideration that, in
that case, the fulfilment would very little correspond to the
promise,--for, to the returning ones, Canaan was too little the land of
God to allow of our seeing, in this return, the whole fulfilment of
God's promise--we can, from the context, easily demonstrate the
opposite. With the gathering and bringing back appears, in ver. 4,
closely connected the raising of the good shepherds; and according to
ver. 5, that promise is to find, if not its sole fulfilment, at all
events its substance and centre, in the raising of David's righteous
Branch, the Messiah. And from vers. 7, 8, it appears that it is here
altogether inadmissible to suppose that these events will take place,
one after the other. The particle [Hebrew: lkN] with which these verses
begin, and which refers to the whole sum and substance of the preceding
promises, shows that the bringing back from the captivity, and the
raising of the Messiah, cannot, by any means, be separated from one
another; and to the same result we are led by the contents of the two
verses also. How indeed could it be said of the bodily bringing back
from the captivity, that it would far outshine the former deliverance
from Egypt, and would cause it to be altogether forgotten? The correct
view was stated as early as by _Calvin_, who says: "There is no doubt
that the Prophet has in view, in the first instance, the free return of
the people; but Christ must not be separated from this blessing of the
deliverance, for, otherwise, it would be difficult to [Pg 409] show the
fulfilment of this prophecy." The right of thus assuming a concurrent
reference to Christ is afforded to us by the circumstance, that Canaan
had such a high value for Israel, not because it was its fatherland in
the lower sense, but because it was the land of God, the place where
His glory