wells, in Babylonia, is the true solution'! He omits to prove that the site of Paradise was in the plain of Babylon. He equally omits to tell us by what well of Naphtha was fed the fiery pillar in the Wilderness, or the blaze that filled the Temple at the dedication. But how much more conformable to the spirit of this great transaction is the literal statement of the historian? Human invention, with all its petty dexterity, can find no substitute for the column of prohibitory splendour, the shekinah, the emblem of the Divine grandeur and terror, flaming, day and night, up to heaven; and perhaps displaying, from the midst of its blaze, the movements and forms assumed by those mighty beings who, in the service of Heaven, unite the rapidity of the whirlwind with the vividness of the flame.

Scholia in Genesin.

CHAPTER XI.

THE ELOHIM.

THE use of the plural, N, to express the Godhead, deserves to take its place among the Scriptural arguments for a plurality of Persons in the Divine Nature. This plural is used no less than two thousand five hundred times in Scripture ;and, almost in every example, with reference to Jehovah'. The word is used in the singular only about sixty times. Without entering into the prolix dissertations in which philology has indulged on the subject, the question may be summed up in the twofold observation: that the use of the plural for the individual is not an idiom of the Hebrew; and that the strong objections arising from the nature of Judaism to the use of a plural appellative of Deity, could have given way only to the stronger reason, that the plurality of Persons existed.

In the first verse of Genesis, it is declared that

1 Simon. Lex; Eickhorn, p. 119.

the Gods (Elohim) created heaven and earth, the verb created being singular; and this is the usual construction, the exceptions being comparatively few. In the 26th verse we have the words, "And the Gods (Elohim) said, Let us make man in our image;❞ language which naturally implies a plurality, combined in one act. The assertions on the contrary side are―

That the Deity is speaking to the angels.—But this would make them the creators, or form the human nature after the angelic; or declare the angelic and the Divine the same: not one of the three suppositions being tenable.

That the historian has adopted the regal style. —But this is not the style of the kings of the Old Testament: and the words are not those of the historian, but expressly of the Deity; they were spoken before kings existed and no subsequent use of the style can account for the expression, "One of us," in a monarch speaking of himself alone.

But the utter improbability of the gratuitous use of the plural name, under the circumstances of the Jewish dispensation, has never received an answer. The great Jewish doctrine was the Unity. The great distinction of the Jewish ritual was the worship of the One Godhead. The whole ceremonial law, rigid and minute as it is, was the guardian of this doctrine. The first command, on the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan was, an

unsparing destruction of all things which could betray them into the native polytheism. Yet, in the books which they were to receive as the direct testimony of Heaven, as their guides and consolations, as the substance of their law and the promise of their national welfare, they found the constant use of a word, which, on the common principles of language, expressed a plurality in the Supreme Being. For the use of this word, what was the necessity? Their language was not destitute of other terms to express Deity. They had the name Jehovah; or, if this were too sacred for adoption on general occasions, they might have used the singular Eloah. But the extreme hazard of justifying the popular tendency to the worship of a plurality of Gods, was to be encountered, and for nothing; and this too in a religion preeminently scrupulous, and where all things, even to the fringe of a priest's garment, were regulated by an express ordinance of Heaven!

This objection was so perfectly felt by the Jews, from the period when they began to pervert the literal meaning of Scripture; that the Rabbins' in

1 The perplexity of the Jews of the middle ages is evinced by the invention of the following trivial and presumptuous fable. Rabbi Samuel Bar Nachman said, that Moses, when, in writing the Law, he was come to the place where he was, by Divine dictation, to write, 'Let us make man,' paused, and replied to God, Lord of the world, why dost thou afford an occasion for error, with respect to thy most simple Unity?' But the Lord

consequence established it as a rule in their grammars, that in all instances of dominion and honour, the plural may be used for the singular-a rule confessedly naked of all authority.

The intent of the triple name is strongly authenticated by its application to the triple form of the Divine protection, as in Numb. vi. 22. "Jehovah spake to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus ye shall bless the children of Israel, by saying to them, Jehovah bless thee and keep thee! Jehovah spread the light of his presence on thee, and be gracious to thee! Jehovah manifest his presence to thee, and grant thee peace. So shall they put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them. This triplicity of office corresponds closely to the Christian benediction of, "The love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit"." It is also strongly similar to the baptismal form, the putting the name of Father, Son, and Spirit, upon the Christian. And those words cannot possibly be considered as accidental, or in mere conformity with any acquiescence in national habits, or, in any sense, as the mere phraseology of man: they are the direct language of Deity, delivered by inspir

replied, Moses, write thou so: and he who desires to err, let him err.' (Bereshith Rabba.)

22 Cor. xii. 14.