lone mentioned as an example of a
people alienated from God? Their colour, perhaps, is more to be
considered in this, than their descent from Ham; the physical blackness
is viewed as an emblem of the spiritual. Thus they appear in Jer. xiii.
23: "Will indeed the Cushite change his skin, and the leopard his
spots? will you indeed be able to do good, who have been taught to do
evil?" But the fundamental passage is the inscription of Ps. vii.,
where Saul, on account of his black wickedness, appears under the
symbolical name of Cush.--The right explanation of these first words
furnishes, at the same time, the key to the sound interpretation of the
words which [Pg 386] follow: It is only for the Covenant-people that
the deliverance from Egypt is a pledge of grace. But you are no longer
the Covenant-people; your being brought up out of Egypt, therefore,
stands on the same line with the bringing up of the Philistines from
their former dwelling-places in Caphtor to their present abodes, and
with the bringing up of the Syrians from Kir, in which no one will see
a pledge of divine grace, a preservative against every danger, and,
especially, an assurance of the impossibility of a new captivity. The
geographical inquiries regarding Caphtor and Kir would lead us too far
away from the subject which we are here discussing. The view which is
now prevalent, and according to which Crete is to be understood by the
former, is in contradiction to the old translations, which have
Cappadocia, and with Gen. x. 14,--as long as, in that passage, the
Colchians are to be understood by the Casluhim. But that point would
require a minute investigation, which may be more suitably carried on
at some other place.

Ver. 8. "_Behold, the eyes of the Lord Jehovah are upon the sinful
kingdom, and I destroy them from off the face of the earth, saving that
I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord._"

_The_ sinful kingdom, whether its name be Israel or Judah, or whether
it be called Egypt or Edom. The holy God has not by any means, as you
in your blindness imagine, given you a privilege to sin. A difference
exists between Israel and the others in this respect only, that utter
ruin does not take place in the case of the former, as it does in that
of the latter. For the distinction between the people of God and other
nations consists in this, that in the former, there always remains a
holy seed, an [Greek: ekloge], which the Lord must prot