uty sweet to us, and,
by His love, to bring it about that we perform it from love. After He
has thus allured us. He leads us from Egypt into the wilderness.--The
words, "I lead her into the wilderness," have been very much
misunderstood by interpreters. According to _Manger_, the wilderness
here is that through which the captives should pass on their return
from Babylon. But one reason alone is sufficient to refute this
opinion,--namely, that on account of the following verse, by the
wilderness (the article must not be overlooked), only that wilderness
can be understood which separates Egypt from Canaan. Others (_Ewald_,
_Hitzig_), following _Grotius_, understand by the wilderness, the
Assyrian captivity. _Kuehnoel_ has acquired great merit for this
exposition, by proving from a passage in _Herodotus_, that there were,
at that time, uncultivated regions in Assyria! The same reason which
militates against the former interpretation is opposed to this also. To
this it may be further added, that, according to it, we can make
nothing of the _alluring_. The Israelites were not _allured_ into
captivity by kindness and love; they were driven into it _against_
their will, by God's wrath. _Moreover_, what according to this
interpretation is to be done with the [Hebrew: mwM] in ver. 17? Did,
perhaps, the vineyards of Canaan begin immediately beyond Assyria, or
does not even this rather lead us to the Arabian desert? It is certain,
then, that this desert is the one to be thought of here, and, in
addition, that it can only be as an image and type that the prophet
here represents the leading through the wilderness, as a repetition
of the former one in its individual form; inasmuch as it was,
substantially, equal with it. For they who returned from the Assyrian
captivity could not well pass through the literal Arabian desert; and
the comparison expressed in the following verse, "As in the day when
she went up from the land of Egypt," shows that here also a _decurtata
comparatio_ must take place. But, now, all depends upon determining the
essential feature, the real nature and substance, of that first leading
through the wilderness; because the leading spoken of in the verse
before us must have that essential feature in common with it. The
principal passage--which must guide us in this investigation, and which
is proved to be such by the circumstance that the Lord Himself referred
[Pg 256] to it when He was _spiritually_ led through the