s already fully developed, we need only compare
the account in _Breshith Rabba_. After Elijah, at the time of the birth
of the Messiah, had visited his mother in Bethlehem Judah, and consoled
her who was afflicted on account of the destruction of the temple,
which was contemporaneous with her delivery, he withdraws. "After five
years had elapsed, he said, I will go and see the Saviour of Israel,
whether he be nursed up in the manner of kings or of ministering
angels. He went and found the woman standing at the door of her house,
and said to her: My daughter, in what state is that boy? And she
answered him: Rabbi, did I not tell thee that it is a bad thing to
nurse him, because, on the day on which he was born, the temple was
destroyed? But this is not all; for _he has feet and walks not, he has
eyes and sees not, he has ears and hears not, he has a mouth and does
not speak at all, and there he lies like a stone._"

The Rabbinical interpreters felt, however, that this fiction, being
destitute of all warrant, was of no use to them in their controversies
with Christians; and it was to these that their view was chiefly
directed. Hence they sought to remove the difficulty by means of the
interpretation; and as all had the same interest, the result was that
the distorted explanation became as generally prevalent, as the correct
one had formerly been. _Kimchi_, _Abenezra_, _Abendana_, _Abarbanel_,
and, in general, all the later Rabbins (compare the passages in
_Wichmannsh._ l. c. S. 9), maintain that Bethlehem is mentioned here as
the birth-place of the Messiah indirectly only,--in so far only as the
Messiah was to be descended from David the Bethlehemite. There cannot
well be a prepossession in favour of this exposition. The circumstance
that, formerly, no one ever thought that it was even possible to
explain the passage under review in any other way than that, in it,
Bethlehem is spoken of as the birth-place of the Messiah, and that this
exposition was discovered and introduced, only at a time when the other
could no longer be received, raises, _a priori_, strong suspicions
against it. And this suspicion is fully confirmed by a closer
examination. _Caeteris paribus_, that explanation which here finds
Bethlehem mentioned as the birth-place of the Messiah, would deserve
the preference, even for this reason, that the passage, as thus
understood, fills up a blank [Pg 498] in the Messianic prophecy,--and
that from the whole analo