Antitype, so that the former may be considered as an actual prophecy of
the latter. But this coincidence must here not be sought in the stay in
the same country only; this circumstance served only to direct
attention to the deeper unity, to represent it outwardly. It was not
from their own choice, but from a series of the most remarkable
dispensations of Providence, and on the express command of God, that
Israel went to Egypt. They thereby escaped from the destruction which
threatened them in the land for which they were really destined. They
were there prepared for their destiny; and when that preparation was
finished, they were, agreeably to the promise of God, which was given
to them even before they went down into Egypt, introduced into that
land in which their destiny was to be realized. The same providence of
God which there chose the means for the preservation of His kingdom,
which was at that time bound up with the existence of the typical
Israel, chose the same means now also when their hopes concentrated
themselves in the person of their future Head. It was necessary that
Egypt should afford Him a safe abode until the danger was over.--There
then follows, in vers. 16-19, the account of the murder of the children
of Bethlehem, with a sole reference to Jer. xxxi. 15, and just on
account of it. Here, too, we must not think of a simple simile only. In
Jeremiah, the mother of Israel laments over the destruction of her
children. The Lord appears and comforts her. Her grief is, at some
future time, to be changed into joy. She is to see the salvation which
the Lord will still bestow upon her sons. That which, therefore,
constitutes the essence of that passage is the contrast of the merited
punishment which Israel drew down upon themselves by their sins, with
the unmerited salvation which the mercy of the Lord will bestow upon
them. Now, quite the same contrast is perceptible in the event under
consideration. In the same manner as the tyranny of the Chaldeans, so
that of Herod also was a deserved punishment for the sins of the
Covenant-people. Herod, by birth a foreigner, was, like Nebuchadnezzar,
a rod of correction in the hand of the Lord. The cruel deed which,
with divine permission, he committed at the very place in which the
Saviour was born, was designed actually and visibly to remind the
Covenant-people [Pg 507] of what they had deserved by their sins,--was
intended also to be a matter-of-fact prophecy of the impe