true reading might be, to be in connection with my, as a title of Jehovah, and that the words DXI MWXI MUD have crept in, improperly, in this place from the following verse. So that the whole of this 19th verse should stand thus:

19. "So Manoah took a kid, with a meal-offering, and offered it upon a rock to Jehovah, who is wonderful in operation. 20. And it came to pass," &c.

Verse 21." Then Manoah knew," &c. i. e. he was convinced. By his conduct, by his offering sacrifice, and by the title he applied to Jehovah, (if the conjecture concerning the true reading of the 19th verse be well founded), it should seem that he had some suspicion who the angel was, as soon as the angel declared that his name was Wonderful.

Verse 23. -" nor would as at this time have told us such things as these;" rather, "nor would have revealed unto us what by the time has actually taken This conversation seems to

כזאת כעת .place

have taken place at some little distance of time after the last appearance of the angel of Jehovah, when Manoah's wife found herself pregnant, and knew by the state of her pregnancy that her conception must have commenced since the time the angel of Jehovah first promised it. To the particular fact of her preg

nancy she alludes by the word N, and to the time of it by the word ny. These two things taken together, that she was now pregnant, and that her conception was posterior to the angel's promise, make a complete proof, that she and her husband were still objects of the angel's favour, and had nothing to apprehend.

CHAP. Xiv, 10. " and Samson made there feast." The LXX add " for seven days."

-

young men," i. e. bridegrooms.

Verse 15.-" on the seventh day." The LXX say "the fourth," which is more consistent with the context. The difference between the textual read

which must have been the הרביעי and השביעי ing

reading of their copies, lies only in the letters and

-" unto us." For , the LXX and Vulgate had," unto thee," which is the better reading.

-"have ye called us, to take that we have? Is it not so?" For at the end of the verse, read "have ye called us hither to take that we have?" See Houbigant.

have » הלאה

Verse 18. " before the sun went down." This is the

בטרם יבא החרסה proper rendering of the words

Nothing can be more ridiculous and absurd than the

interpretation proposed by some of the divines of the Hutchinsonian school, "before it went towards the sunward," which, they say, is the

ing of the words, taking the final

literal render

for the suffix of local motion, or of the place to which.

See

Spemman's Inquiry, p. 205. But how will they expound the pronoun it? That sunset is the time meant is pretty generally agreed. Now, what is it that, at the season of sunset, goes to the sunward? Would they say "the day?" But in what sense does the day go sunward at sunset? If by day, they would say we are to understand that part of the atmosphere, which is agitated and put in a bustle by the solar light falling upon it, which they with great truth contend to be the proper sense of the word

", I ask, how this day goes sunward at sunset, or at any other season? That part of the atmosphere, which is now day, at sunset is carried from the sun by the diurnal rotation, and ceases to be day, and another part is brought sunward, or brought under the sun, and receives his rays, and becomes day. So that the day, which now is, can with no propriety of speech be said to go sunward. But what is now night is coming sunward. The word occurs for the sun only in three places, perhaps only in two,

(see Judges viii, 13), of which this is one. In the other two it is masculine. But in this the final is purely paragogic. I would not say it is the feminine termination, because the word is the nominative of a masculine verb. At the same time, nouns truly feminine are in many instances connected with verbs of the masculine form. Granting, what the Hutchinsonians contend, that properly denotes the fire in the sun; yet since at sunset the heat of the sun, no less than his light, is withdrawn for the night season from any particular place, to which he sets; the solar fire may, with little less propriety than his light, be said to depart at sunset from every such place. For even the light departs not from the place, but the place from the light. For although the light, emitted from the sun, be indeed in motion in every region of the universe, except where it is intercepted by the intervention of opaque bodies, yet it is not by that motion that light is taken away from any particular place upon the 'earth's surface, but the place, by the earth's motion, is taken away from the light. And by the same means it is taken away from the warmth of the sun, which warmth is the

effect of the fire burning in the sun.

To say, there

To

fore, that the warmth of the sun goes from a parti

cular place, is no greater impropriety of speech than to say his light goes, an expression which the sacred writers confessedly use. And to say that his fire is gone, when the thing meant is that his warmth is gone, is only to use a metonymy. It is to put the name of the cause for the name of the effect. to say the day goes sunward, were to use no intelligible figure of speech at all, but to talk nonsense.

But

The learned Mr Parkhurst, aware, it may be supposed, of these objections, takes another method to avoid the impropriety of speech, which is supposed to be involved in the expression, according to the common interpretation of it. He supposes that the time meant is not sunset, but the forenoon of the day. And he says the words should be rendered, "before it [the place or city] came towards the solar orb;" i. e. to the meridian; before mid-day or noon. See Parkhurst, N, 1. But the objection to this exposition is, that no place or city has been mentioned in the context, in the whole preceding part of this story (taking the beginning of it from the 8th verse), which may be understood here as the nominative of the verb ", or which the pronoun 'it' in English may rehearse. And nothing can be more unreasonable than to suppose that the