viz., God made manifest in the flesh." With respect to this promise,
however, it must also be kept in mind that it will be finally fulfilled
only in the future, when the kingdom and throne of glory (compare Matt.
xix. 28) shall be set up.

The prophet had hitherto described the kingdom which was to be
established anew, as a kingdom of God, without mentioning the channel
through which His mercy was to be poured out upon the Congregation--the
mediator who was to represent Him among them. His representation,
therefore, was still defective; it still wanted the connection with the
promise given to David, and so frequently celebrated by him, and by
other [Pg 454] holy Psalmists and Prophets--the promise of the eternal
dominion of David's house. According to this promise, every new, great
manifestation of grace, must be through some descendant of this family
as a mediator. This house must ever form the substratum on which the
divine power and the divine nature, in its most complete manifestation,
showed themselves. This blank is supplied in ver. 8.

"_And thou tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, unto thee
it will come; and to thee cometh the former dominion, the kingdom of
the daughter of Zion._"

In the words immediately preceding it is said: "And the Lord reigneth
over them from henceforth, even for ever." We have here, then, a
prediction of the dominion of the house of David, by whose mediation
the Lord is to reign; compare v. 3 (4), where it is said of Him in whom
the Davidic race is to centre, "And He stands, and feeds in the
strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God."
All interpreters agree that the Davidic race is designated by the
"Tower of the flock," and by "the hill of the daughter of Zion;" but,
with respect to the ground of this designation, they are very much at
variance. A great number of them (_Grotius_, and among the recent
interpreters, _Rosenmueller_, _Winer_, _Gesenius_, _De Wette_) think of
that Tower of the flock, in the neighbourhood of which Jacob, according
to Gen. xxxv. 21, took up his abode for a time. They say that,
according to _Jerome_, this Tower of the flock was situated in the
immediate neighbourhood of Bethlehem; that it is used here only by way
of a _metalepsis_ for Bethlehem, and that Bethlehem again designates
the Davidic race; so that the passage agrees altogether with v. 1 (2).
But, upon a closer examination, this interpretation appears to be
ob