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makes the second clause of the yow entirely unnecessary; for if Jephthab meant to say, that whatsoever came out of his house should be consecrated to the Lord in such manner as was suitable to its nature, this is fully conveyed in the first clause; and the addition of the second, separated from the former by an OR, instead of helping to determine his meaning, is of no use but to perplex it. Finally, the FOURTH, or Dr. Randolph's RENDERING," WHOSOEVER Cometh out of the doors of my house, &c.—shall be the Lord's, AND I will offer (to) HIM a burnt-offering;" seems to come within the rules of grammar, and it supposes nothing that must necessarily have been foreign to Jephthah's thoughts: it meets the expectation he must naturally have had, that a human being would be the first to come to meet him; and when he resolved to consecrate that person to the Lord, it is not unlikely that he should propose to accompany the ceremony with a burnt-sacrifice. Dr. R.'s version is, nevertheless, attended with considerable difficulties; and as I have no where seen any critical remarks upon it, I will offer the following.

Although Dr. R.'s translation appears to be justified by the usage of the sacred writers, it certainly does not follow their common usage; nor, though probably the true rendering, is it one which any Hebraist would have thought of, if not driven, by the necessity of the case, to seek for a meaning different from that first presented by the words. He, accordingly, candidly acknowledges that it is not without difficulties; and he chiefly relies upon moral considerations for its support. These, of course, lend equal support to the third or Kimchi's rendering, and are much the same as the advocates of that rendering usually offer: but against that, the grammatical objections are so great, that (for this reason, I suppose,) Dr. R. has thought it unworthy of the least notice. For his own, he offers, in addition to his moral arguments, two philological ones; the value of which I will endeavour to estimate.

The first, as already noticed, is founded upon an observation of Buxtorf's. But it is to be observed, that this is given, not as a grammatical rule, but as an occasional exception. The Rule is, " Affixed Pronouns belong properly to none but active Verbs; and they denote the person of the patient, which those Verbs express by the accusative case." They are, in fact, precisely in the same predicament, as an accusative case governed by an active verb in Latin. As then the construction is a deviation from the regular rule, Buxtorf, after giving some instances of it, guards it with this caution: "These and similar instances, Kimchi observes in his Michlol, are to be observed and noted by use; but all verbs, promiscuously, are not to be drawn to this construction. The Hebrew language does indeed frequently use this concise and contracted mode of expression, where the sense, notwithstanding, remains clear : but great care must be taken lest the style be rendered harsh, or ambiguous, and lest any violence be offered to the meaning. It must only be resorted to where the language loses by it nothing of its clearness and elegance." Here the irregularity is itself limited by a rule; and if the rule be accurate,-if the affixed pronoun is never used for the regular dative where it would create harshness or ambiguity; then, certainly, it cannot be so used in the words of Jephthah; where, if it is, the ambiguity it occasions is such, that this acute grammarian himself, who first explained this construction, never suspected its existence here. It is remarkable, also, that among the instances of this construction collected by Buxtorf and Parkhurst, are none in which it attends

verbs of offering or sacrificing. Such verbs often have the pronoun affixed to denote the thing offered, but not another example can be found, in which it is used for the Being to whom the offering is made.

עולה

The second philological argument urged by Dr. Randolph in favour of his translation, and much insisted on by Parkhurst and A. Clarke, is, the omission of the preposition before the word for burnt-offering. "If Jephthah had meant," says Mr. Parkhurst, " as translated, I will offer it for a burnt-offering, for, ought to have been prefixed to as in Gen. xxii. 2, 13." It is extraordinary that the author of a Hebrew Lexicon, who must have been familiar with every word in the Bible, should say that there ought to be a in this place, when there are many similar instances of its absence. In the writings of Moses, indeed, it seems to be commonly, perhaps always, used; but seldom in the other books; I believe, never. Thus (1 Sam. vi. 14,) we read, that when the ark was sent home by the Philistines, the men of Bethshemesh offered the cows (for) a burnt-offering,prefixed,)—to the Lord. In the next chapter (ver. 9,) we have, in the mar ginal reading called the Keri, which is evidently right, the very same construction as in Jephthah's vow the affixed pronoun,-1,-is joined to the verb to express the thing offered, and the is omitted before the noun: "Then Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it (for) a burnt-offering

ל without the) עלה

whole to the Lord." For other examples, see Isa. xl. 16, and Jer. xix. 5. But in 2 Kings iii. 27, is a case exactly parallel to this of Jephthah. What Jephthah, according to the most direct import of his words and the Septuagint rendering of them, is supposed to have promised to do, the king of Moab, when sore pressed by the kings of Israel, Judah and Edom, is affirmed to have done; and in precisely the same words joined in precisely the same construction. Of the king of Moab it is said, "Then took he his eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him (for) a burntoffering upon the wall." The words that express, and offered him (for) a burnt-offering, are: Jephthah's are

are : ויעלהו עלה : והעליתיהו עולה

the only difference is in the mood, tense and person of the verb, and a common variety in the spelling of the noun: the same affix,-,-is used in both; in both the is omitted.

It must now, I think, be evident, that although Dr. Randolph's interpretation may possibly be correct, its credit must stand entirely upon the strength of his first grammatical argument, the applicability of which to the case is, we have seen, not indisputable: his second, we find, is destitute of any validity whatsoever.

And it is no less evident, that, after all the labours of the learned to fix a sense upon Jephthah's vow which should exclude the idea that a human sacrifice was either intended by it or might be its unintended result, nothing satisfactory has been produced. It is still undeniable, that the old common translation, or rather the older one of the Septuagint, is that which naturally flows from the words, if taken in their regular construction. Certain it is, that if Jephthah had spoken English, and had said, "Whosoever cometh out of the doors of my house, &c.-shall be the Lord's, and I will offer him up for a burnt-offering ;" and these words had been translated from English into Hebrew; they could not otherwise have been exactly rendered than by the very words which now stand in the Hebrew Bible.

Upon the whole, then, I think, it will be admitted, that the assertion in the Lecture is fully made out, "that the most unforced inference from the language of the original, and from the history in general, is, that the sacrifice took place." But as, nevertheless, there are other considerations which render it in the highest degree improbable that such a sacrifice did take place, it seems to be reasonable to conclude, that the letter is so framed as apparently to affirm it, because, otherwise, the subjects treated of in the spiritual sense, for the sake of which, pre-eminently, the letter is constructed, could not have been fully represented. How important then does the doctrine of a spiritual sense become, as affording the only key to a satisfactory solution of Buch difficulties!

No. VII. (Page 399.)

ARGUMENTS FOR THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRST PART OF GENESIS CONSIDERED.

I HAVE stated in the text above, that the regarding of the early part of Genesis as a pure allegory, solves all the difficulties attending it, and is itself unattended by any. I am aware, however, that difficulties have been attempted to be raised against the allegorical interpretation; but the arguments by which they are supported appear to me to be scarcely deserving of the least consideration, to be such as would never have been offered but in behalf of a cause altogether indefensible. We will here notice one or two that are most insisted on; being the only ones I have seen which make any approach towards plausibility.

It has been urged, that the account of Adam and Eve, and of the other antediluvian patriarchs, is referred to in the New Testament as real. But, certainly, nothing is any where said of them which is not as applicable to the spiritual as to the literal acceptation of the history. For instance: When Paul says, "that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive," the meaning is the same if we understand by Adam the first assem blage of human beings who were ever formed by God into a Church, and by the departure of whom from the primeval integrity man at this day inherits a corrupt nature, as if we understand by him a single individual: indeed it is perfectly evident, that the Apostle uses the term Adam for man's state by nature. In like manner, when the genealogy of Jesus Christ is carried up to Adam, the true meaning is the same, whether some of those personages be purely allegorical characters or not. For although those from Abraham, or perhaps from Eber, were individual men who lived as such in the world, they still were all representative characters, and they are mentioned in that genealogy to denote certain species of human minds, or certain principles which enter into the composition of the human mind: these then are enumerated as ancestors, according to the flesh, of the Lord Jesus Christ, to inform us, that

⚫ 1 Cor. av. 21.

in his human nature was concentred every thing belonging to the human character, from highest to lowest, from first to last; every thing that had ever entered into it, from the primeval times, when human nature appeared in its highest integrity, so as to be almost a pure, abstract essence, till the age in which he was born among the Jews, who then were the most gross and carnalized race that ever existed: thus that all was assumed, and all was redeemed, by him.

Of the same nature is the objection of Lord Bolingbroke, whose statement is quoted by one of the advocates of the literal interpretation, and who introduces it thus: "Even Lord Bolingbroke, (than whom Revelation never had a more subtle opposer) justly rejects the allegorical interpretation: 'It cannot (says he) be admitted by Christians; for if it was, what would become of that famous text [that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head,] whereon the doctrine of our redemption is founded?' "'* But the writer who has adduced this as authority, while he declares the subtilty of this opponent of revelation, has here, in his own simplicity, overlooked the snake in the grass. The passage he quotes is itself an example of the subtilty of the noble infidel; whose object, doubtless, was, to clog the belief of Revelation with all possible difficulties; and who therefore wished to shut out the allegorical interpretation of this part of the Word of God, because he saw that, if this were admitted, no solid objection would lie against it. Whether the woman spoken of in this prophecy denote the first female of the human race, or human nature in general as to its principle of affection or will, it equally was fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was as truly the seed of the woman in the spiritual as in the literal sense of the words.

In another instance it has been attempted to overturn the whole doctrine of allegorical interpretation by a quibble: it has been said, that " a figurative fall would require only a figurative redemption." But it is not the fall itself which the allegorical interpretation represents as figurative, but the description of it: the fall itself it considers as real, and, of course, that it required a real redemption.

Altogether then, I trust, it must be seen, that every consideration which can be brought to bear upon this question, confirms the fact, that the history in this part of Genesis is a continued allegory; and that no reasonable objection can be raised against it.

No. VIII.

REMARKS ON THE RECENT VOLUME OF BAMPTON LECTURES, BY THE LATE REV. J. J. CONYBEARE, M. A.; AND ON THE SUPPORT IT AFFORDS TO THE LEADING PRINCIPLE OF THE PRESENT WORK.

It has yielded no small encouragement to the Author of the work now offered to the public, to see issue from the press while these Lectures were in it, a

⚫ Horne's Introd, vol. i. p. 174.

volume which, to a considerable extent, espouses and most ably maintains the same argument; a volume, also, the character and intrinsic merits of which must recommend it to a large and influential body of readers: whilst it can hardly fail to generate, in the minds of many who peruse it, ideas upon the spiritual interpretation of Scripture, which nothing but such a consistent system as the present work endeavours to develope can satisfy and fill. As was to be expected, the amiable and learned author, whose sudden loss to the church of which he was so decided an ornament I sincerely unite with her in lamenting, does not attempt to free the system of spiritual interpretation from those incumbrances and inconsistencies, with which, as has been noticed in our Lectures above, it has in modern ages been crippled. But the reason evidently is, because he had not found in the writers on Scripture-interpretation whom he had examined, any Rule of uniform and universal application. Had such a regular system been presented to him, it appears reasonable to infer, from the affirmative sentiments with which his mind was so strongly imbued on the general question, that he would have accepted it with joy; and therefore, beside the general grounds for regretting his premature removal, I cannot but think that I have a personal one also, and that the present work has lost by the dispensation, not only a well qualified and candid, but, in addition, a favourable judge.

Mr. Conybeare (who was brother to the gentleman from whose valuable writings on Geology an extract or two are taken in our Lecture above,*) describes his work as "An attempt to trace the history, and to ascertain the limits, of the Secondary and Spiritual Interpretation of Scripture ;" and the argument of the whole is precisely the same, though in a form so much more extended, as that of the third Section of our second Lecture. Had not our work been so enlarged as almost to render the single volume to which it is necessarily, by its original plan, confined, a book of inconvenient bulk, I should have deemed it advisable,-for certainly it would materially promote my own design, to examine these Bampton Lectures at a length proportioned to their importance and interest: as it is, I must confine my notice of them to a few quotations and some brief remarks. Not to notice them at all would be doing equal injustice to my readers and myself.

The first Lecture, after proposing the design of the work, is chiefly occupied with arguments on the reasonableness and necessity of admitting the Scriptures to contain, in general, a spiritual sense, and against the low principles of Scripture-interpretation which have become general on the continent.

In the following passage the author advances several of the principles which we have endeavoured to establish in this work: "However we may scruple (as many in the fair and legitimate exercise of private judgment doubtless will scruple) to follow the more learned and eminent of these [the authors who have enumerated several divisions and varieties of the spiritual sense] to the full extent of their respective theories; yet, that such a secondary and spiritual meaning was, from the earliest period, partially at least, involved in the traditional and written monuments of the Jewish faith, cannot, we hold, be fairly and successfully denied ; cannot even be doubted by any one who, with a belief in their inspiration, and an unprejudiced and impartial frame of mind, applies

• P. 389, 390.

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