Babylon, Sodom, and Egypt, then, are names used in the same spiritual signification; they each denote the seat of spiritual adultery. The sinful" nation" of Judah is addressed by Isaiah under the names Sodom and Gomorrah. And, wheresoever spiritual whoredom is committed, there is our Lord crucified. Our Lord "suffered without the gate" of Jerusalem. Without the gate of the new Jerusalem "are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie ";" therefore, whatever lieth without the gate of this heavenly city is "spiritually called Sodom and Egypt;" and they, who, by their sins, exclude themselves from that city, and dwell in the spiritual Sodom and Egypt, "crucify the Son of GOD afresh." Thus Christ is, in a spiritual sense, crucified without the gate of the new Jerusalem; He is crucified in the spiritual Babylon, Sodom, and Egypt. Egypt, Sodom, and Babylon, then, are names employed to denote the empire of infidelity, in opposition to the spiritual Jerusalem, or the "Jerusalem which is above," which denotes the spiritual kingdom of Christ. Aholah and Aholibah defiled themselves with the Babylonians', b Isaiah, i. 10. d Rev. xxii. 15. e Hebr. vi. 6. f Ezek. xxiii. 7. and Assyrians, and Egyptians h. Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt, then, represent the dominion of spiritual whoredom. Babylon is represented by St. John as "the mother of abominations i;" Isaiah represents the Babylon of which he speaks, as a woman who trusted in wickedness, sorceries, and enchantments, and she is threatened with the loss of her children'. The denunciations against Babylon, as delivered in the Revelations, are conveyed in language precisely similar to that in which the fall of Babylon is announced by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah". Egypt is described as "a staff of reed "," "a broken reed," to them that trust in it. They who "despise the word of God and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon P," are they to whom the Lord saith, "Woe to the rebellious children; that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin; that walk to go down to Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow 8 Ezek. xxiii. 5, 7, 9, 12. h Ezek. xxiii. 8, 19, 21; xvi. 26. i Rev. xvii. 5. m Isaiah, xlvii. 9, 10, 13. Compare Rev. xiv. 8, 10, 11; xvi. 12, 19; xvii.; xviii.; xix. 2; with Isaiah, xiii. 9, 10, 19, 20, 22; xiv. 4, 12; xxi. 9. Jere. l.; li. n Ezek. xxix. 6. Isaiah, xxx. 12. of Egypt. Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion." Pharaoh is called the great dragon: "Set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against Egypt. Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself. But I will put hooks in thy jaws; I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven'." Thus the Psalmist speaks of the destruction of the foriner Pharaoh in the Red Sea : "Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters; thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness." "In that day, the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan that crooked serpent, and he shall slay the dragon that is in the seat." "The dragon, that old serpent, is the devil or Satan";" he shall be slain by "the sword of the Spirit which is the word of GOD"," which is quick and powerful and sharper than any twoedged sword *;" with which sword Christ fights against His enemies, and smites the nations. Satan is the dragon that is in the sea; the sea being figuratively used in Scripture to denote the seat of the dominion of Satan. "Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab [Egypt], and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over? Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head "." These words refer to the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, and they show that the drying of the deep, the overthrow of Pharaoh in the sea, and the deliverance of the Israelites from the power of Egypt, afforded a figure of the redemption of mankind, as has already been shown. The destruction of the temporal Pharaoh in the sea, was a figure of the destruction of the spiritual "Pharaoh-the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers d;" it * Hebr. iv. 12. Rev. i. 16; ii. 12, 16. z Rev. xix. 15, 21. Isaiah, li. 9-11. repre c See PART II. SECT. II. d Ezek. xxix. 3. 1 "The sented the destruction of "leviathan, that crooked serpent-the dragon that is in the sea," the ruler of the spiritual Egypt, the prince of the powers of darkness. The annihilation of the ruler of the temporal Egypt, in the waters of the Red Sea, represented the destruction of the ruler of spiritual Egypt by those waters of salvation which Christ has imparted to mankind. depths of the sea" were made "a way for the ransomed to pass over," in representation of the salvation afforded to mankind by our Saviour, who "maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters." He hath prepared a way to the heavenly Zion: "in the habitation of dragons where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes, and an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness ; the unclean shall not pass over it—but the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion, with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads." "I will bring my people again from the depths of the seah" "The Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea, and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dry-shod. And there shall be an d Isaiah, xxvii. 1. Isaiah, li. 10. Isaiah, xliii. 16; xix. 5. s Isaiah, xxxv. 7—10. h Psalm lxviii. 22. |