to the South country, from which it had proceeded. The
South country penetrates to Edom; the inhabitants of Jerusalem extend
beyond the South country.

Ver. 21. "_And saviours go up on Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau,
and the kingdom shall be the Lord's._"

[Hebrew: elv] is to be accounted for from the consideration, that the
deliverance and salvation imply the entire overthrow--the total
carrying away of the people. The Saviour [Greek: kat' exochen] is
hidden beneath the "saviours;" compare Judges iii. 9, 15; Neh. ix. 27.
But even here, everything is connected with human individuals; and the
more glorious the salvation which the prophet beholds in the future,
viz., the absolute dominion of the Lord, and His people, over the
world, the less can it be conceived that the prophet should have
expected the realization of it by a collective body of mortal men
without a leader. But the plural intimates that the antitype is not
without types,--that the head cannot be conceived of without members.
In Jer. xxiii. 4, we read: "And I raise up shepherds over them
which shall feed them;" and immediately afterwards the one good
shepherd--Christ--forms the subject of discourse.--"And the kingdom
shall be the Lord's."--His dominion, till _then_ concealed, shall now
be publicly manifested, and the people of the earth shall acknowledge
it, either spontaneously, or by constraint. The coming of this kingdom
has begun with Christ, and, in Him, waits for its consummation. The
opinion of _Caspari_, that the contents of vers. 19 and 20, as well
as the close of this prophecy, belong altogether to the future,
rests on a false, literal explanation, the inadmissibility of which
is sufficiently evident from the circumstance that the Edomites,
Philistines, and Canaanites have long since disappeared from the scene
of history; so that there exists no longer the possibility of a literal
fulfilment.

Footnote 1: The fact that, _everywhere_, the discourse is addressed to
the Edomites, proves that here also Edom is addressed. The [Hebrew: ki]
and the [Hebrew: kawr] in this verse, compared with those in the
preceding verse, likewise suggest this. Compare, moreover, Joel iv.
(iii.) 3, to which passage there is already an allusion in ver. 11.

Footnote 2: Namely, the cup of punishment, of divine wrath.

[Pg 407]

THE PROPHET JONAH.

It has been asserted without any sufficient reason, that Jonah is older
than H