rs, mothers,
etc., Mark x. 30. The words of God, which are spirit and life, must be
understood with spirit and life.--Suppose that the children of Israel
were, at some future time, to return to Canaan, this would have nothing
to do with our prophecy. In a religious point of view, it would
be a matter of no consequence, and could not serve to prove the
covenant-faithfulness of God. Under the New Covenant it finds its
fulfilment, that "Canaan must, even in the North, bloom joyfully around
the beloved." The three stations [Pg 229]--Egypt, the wilderness, and
Canaan--will continue to exist for ever; but we go from the one to the
other only with the feet of the spirit, and not, as in the Old
Covenant, with the feet of the body at the same time. The grossly
literal explanation which knows not to separate the thought from its
drapery, the essential from the accidental, agrees, just in the main
point, with the allegorical explanation--viz., in interpolating,
instead of interpreting.--The fulfilment of the prophecy before us is,
therefore, a continuous and progressive one, which will not cease until
God's whole plan of salvation be consummated. It began at Babylon, and
was carried forward at the appearance of Christ, whom many out of Judah
and Israel set over themselves as their head, to be their common leader
to Canaan. It is, even now, realized every day before our eyes in every
Israelite who follows their example. It will, at some future time, find
its final fulfilment in the last and greatest manifestation of God's
covenant-faithfulness towards Israel, which, happily, is as strongly
guaranteed by the New as it is by the Old Testament.--The last words of
the verse have been already explained, substantially, in ver. 1. The
name "Jezreel" is here used with a reference to its appellative
signification. Israel appears here (compare ver. 25 [23], which serves
as a commentary and as a refutation of differing interpretations) as a
seed which is sown by God in fruitful land, and which shall produce a
rich harvest. The figure appears, with a somewhat different turn, in
Jer. xxxi. 27; Ezek. xxxvi. 9, where the house of Israel, and the house
of Judah, appear as the soil in which the seed is sown by God.
Analogous is also Ps. lxxii. 16: "They of the city shall flourish up
like the grass of the earth."--The [Hebrew: ki] is explained by the
circumstance that the sowing, which can take place only in the land of
the Lord (compare ver. 25), su