ction,
therefore, everything seemed to be lost; every prospect of a better
future seemed to have disappeared. The reference in [Pg 467] Jer. viii.
19, where the king is the Lord Himself, to the passage before us, is
very beautiful, and full of deep meaning. It points out the truth, that
the loss of the earthly king is a consequence of their having forced
the heavenly King to withdraw from the midst of them.--The "councillor"
is preeminently the king himself; compare Is. ix. 5, where Christ, in
whom the Davidic dynasty is to attain to the full height of its
destination, appears as the councillor in the highest sense. Other
councillors, it is true, are not thereby excluded; they form, however,
only a group around the king as their centre; compare Is. iii. 3.

Ver. 10. "_Travail and break forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman
who bringeth forth; for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and
thou dwellest in the field, and comest till to Babylon: there shalt
thou be delivered, there the Lord shall redeem thee out of the hand of
thine enemies._"

The consolation begins with the words [Hebrew: wM tncli] only; the
whole remaining part of the verse is of a mournful character. In the
words, "Travail and break forth," one aspect only of the figure of the
parturient woman is brought into view, viz., the pain; but not the joy
following upon the pain; compare remarks on v. 2. The Imperative is
thus not, as some interpreters erroneously assume, an _Imper.
consolationis_, but an intimation that the pain would reach its height,
put into the form of an exhortation to submit to it. Much more
satisfactorily than by many of the later expositors, the sense of this
verse has been thus fixed by _Calvin_: "The sum and substance is, that
although God would, according to His promise, take care of the people,
the faithful should have no reason from this to indulge in joy, as if
they were to be exempt from all troubles; on the contrary, the prophet
exhorts them that they should rather prepare themselves to undergo all
kinds of misery, so that, when driven out of their own land, they
should not only, like straying people, wander about in the fields, but
should be driven to Babylon as into a grave. But while he thus prepares
the faithful to bear the cross, he subjoins the hope of salvation,
viz., that God would deliver them, and redeem them from thence out of
the hands of their enemies."--The [Hebrew: Hvli] resumes the preceding,
where the pr