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ing cut off from the people of God, for their infidelity, the posterity of Abraham should preserve their primitive blessing, that is, religion, the land of Canaan, and the hope of the Messiah, only in the tribe of Judah, which was to give name to the rest of the Israelites, who were called Jews, and to the whole country, which was named Judea.

Thus the divine election continually appears, even in that carnal people, who were to be preserved by ordinary propagation.

Jacob saw in spirit the secret of this election*. When he was about to die, and his children around his bed were craving the blessing of so good a father, God discovered to him the state of the twelve tribes, when they should be in the promised land: he unfolded it in a few words, and those few words contain innumerable mysteries.

Though all he says of Judah's brethren is expressed with an extraordinary dignity, and bespeaks a man transported beyond himself by the spirit of God; yet when he comes to Judah, he rises still higher. †Judah, says he, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies: thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? The sceptre (that is, the authority) shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto him shall + Ibid. 8.

*Gen. xlix.

the gathering of the people be: or, according to another reading, which is, perhaps, no less ancient, but which in the main differs nothing from this, until he come, for whom things are reserved, and the rest as we have above recited it.

The sequel of the prophecy literally refers to the country which the tribe of Judah was to possess in the holy land. But the latter words we have quoted, take them how we will, can signify nothing else, than Him who was to be the Sent of God, the minister and interpreter of his will, the accomplishment of his promises, and the king of the new people, that is, the Messiah, or the Lord's anointed.

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Jacob speaks of him, expressly, to Judah only from whom that Messiah was spring: he comprehends in the destiny of Judah alone that of the whole nation, which, after its dispersion, was to see the remnant of the other tribes re-united under the standards of Judah.

All the terms of the prophecy are clear: there is only the word sceptre, which the custom of our language might make us take for royalty alone; whereas, in the sacred language, it signifies, in general, power, authority, magistracy. This use of the word is to be met with in every page of Scripture it appears even manifestly in Jacob's prophecy; and the patriarch means, that in the days of the Messiah all authority should cease in the house of Judah, which implies the total overthrow of a state.

Thus the times of the Messiah are marked

out here by a double change. By the first, the kingdom of Judah, and of the Jewish nation, is threatened with its final ruin. By the second, there is to arise a new kingdom, not out of one people only, but out of all nations, of whom the Messiah is to be the head and the hope.

In Scripture style, the Jewish people is called, in the singular number* and by way of eminence, the people, or, the people of God; and when we read the nations, those who are versed in the Scriptures, understand the other nations, who had been also promised to the Messiah in the prophecy of Jacob.

That great prophecy comprehends, in a few words, the whole history of the Jewish people, and of the CHRIST who is promised to them. It points out the whole progress of the people of God, and its effect has not yet ceased.

But I do not intend to make you a commentary upon it: you will have no occasion for that, since, by merely observing the progress of the people of God, you will see the sense of the oracle unfolded of itself, and that the events will be its interpreters.

III. Moses, the written Law, and the Introduction of the People into the promised Land.

AFTER the death of Jacob, the people of God sojourned in Egypt, till the time of the

* Is. lxv. &c. Rom. x. 19, &c. Is. ii, 2, 3, 4. xlix. 6. 18. li. 4, 5, &C.

mission of Moses, that is about two hundred years.

Thus 430 years passed away, before God gave his people the land he had promised them.

He meant to accustom his elect to rely upon his promise, assured that it would, sooner or later, be fulfilled, and always in the time appointed by his eternal providence.

The iniquity of the Amorites*, whose land and spoils He resolved to give them, was not yet, as He declares to Abraham, at the height for which he waited, in order to deliver them up to the severe and unpitying vengeance which he intended to inflict upon them by the hands of his chosen people.

It was necessary to give this people time to multiply, that they might be in a condition to fill the land that was destined for them, and to take possession of it by force, by exterminating its inhabitants, who were accursed of God.

He willed that they should undergo a hard and insupportable captivity in Egypt, in order that, when they were delivered by unheard-of miracles, they might love their deliverer, and eternally celebrate his mercies.

Such was the order of God's counsels, as he himself hath revealed them to us, in order to teach us to fear Him, to adore Him, to love Him, and to wait for Him with faith and patience.

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The time being arrived, he hears the cries of his people, cruelly afflicted by the Egyptians, and sends Moses to deliver his children from their tyranny.

He makes himself known to this great man*, more than he had ever done to any man living. He appears to him in a manner equally glorious and comforting: he declares to him that he is HE WHO IS. All that is before him, is but a shadow. I am, says he, that I am†: being and perfection belong to Me alone. He assumes a new name, which denotes being and life in Him, as in their source; and it is under this great name of God, fearful and mysterious, and incommunicable, that he will henceforth be served.

I shall not give you a particular detail of the plagues of Egypt ‡, or of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, or of the passage of the Red Sea, or of the thunderings, lightnings, smoke, and noise of the trumpet that were witnessed by the people on Mount Sinai. God there wrote with his own hand, upon two tables of stone, the fundamental precepts of religion and society: He dictated the rest to Moses with a loud voice. To maintain this law in its full force, he had orders to form a venerable assembly of seventy counsellors §, which might be called the senate of the people of God, and the perpetual council of the nation. God God appeared publicly, and caused his law to be

* Exod. iii. + Ibid. 14.
Exod. xxv. Numb. xi.

Ibid.. xx. 18.

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