hereby, according to the
explanation given on chap. xxxi. 32, into a covenant with man. By the
inviolable maintenance of the course of nature, He binds himself to the
inviolable maintenance of the moral order. This clearly appears when we
consider that, after the great flood, the covenant with nature is anew
entered into, and its inviolability anew established; comp. Gen. ix. 9:
"Behold, I establish my covenant _with you_, and with your seed after
you;" viii. 22: "All the days of the earth, seed time and harvest, and
heat and cold, and summer and autumn, and day and night shall not cease
any more." With these covenant-promises, covenant-laws and obligations
are connected, which the covenant imposes. With this covenant of
nature, which is common to all men, and which, at Noah's time, was not
made for the first time, but only renewed, the covenant of grace, which
is peculiar to Israel only, stands on a level. To assert that the
latter has become void, is nothing else than to attempt to pull sun and
moon down from heaven. For it is one and the same God who has made both
covenants.

Ver. 22. "_As the host of heaven is not numbered, and as the sand of
the sea is not measured, so will I increase the seed of David, my
servant, and the Levites that minister unto me._"

Even considered in itself, the literal fulfilment of this verse [Pg
470] involves an absurdity. Such an increase of the bodily descendants
of David lies beyond the bounds of possibility; and even if this were
not the case, yet this increase, just as the similar increase of the
Levites, would not have the nature of a promise, but that of a
threatening. At all events, the consolation would have no relation to,
or connection with, the grief For the latter did not refer to the
number of the descendants of David, and that of the Levites, but to
their acceptance with God, and, in them, to the acceptance of the
people; but that acceptance has nothing to do with number. To this,
another reason is still to be added. It cannot be denied that there is
a verbal reference to the promise to Abraham in Gen. xv. 5, xxii. 17.
Since, then, these words, which originally referred to all Israel, are
here transferred to the family of David, and to the Levites, it is
thereby sufficiently intimated that all Israel shall be changed into
the family of David, and into the tribe of Levi. This idea need not at
all surprise us. It has its foundation in the Law itself All that is
announced h