tion and it has this particular advantage, that it holds forth (in conformity with the whole tenor of the Scriptures) such a foundation of the relation of love, mercy, gratitude, between God and the pardoned sinner, as particularly suits the innumerable passages in which, as hath been before shown, the plural Elohim seems to be introduced as involving, in its proper signification, such a relation: and though some have affected to be shocked, at the manner of the application of the singular Eloah in the Hutchinsonian scheme of interpretation, to the second person, there is nothing in it, but what may be fully justified by the manner in which the Holy Scriptures speak of the incarnate God, as submitting to be made a curse for man.

Plausible however as these interpretations seem, and unexceptionable as they are, as they regard doctrine, the difficulties, in the etymological part of the business, are much greater than has yet appeared.

It is absolutely necessary to the Hutchinsonian scheme of interpretation, and this they themselves admit, that of the two nouns, the singular should be passive, the plural active. That the singular , Eloah, is passive, they infer from the "between

the and the 7, the second and third radical. But this will not of necessity make the word passive : for innumerable verbals are to be found formed with the epenthetic Vau, between the second and third radicals, without any thing passive in their signification, as will be manifest to any one who will take the trouble to examine the long list of verbals in Buxtorf's Thesaurus Linguæ Sanctæ ; or the more accurate list, as some perhaps may think it, in Schroeder's Institutiones ad Fundamenta Ling. Heb. This indeed amounts not to proof that the word is not passive; but it makes the matter doubtful: and unless it be proved, which we believe will not easily be done, that the exposition of it, as applied in a passive sense to the second person of the Trinity in particular, in the passages in which the word occurs, produces some particular emphasis or propriety in all, or at least in many of them; that exposition, and that appropriation of the word, will remain very questionable. But, secondly, if we admit that Eloah is passive in its signification, new difficulties will arise. If the singular Eloah be passive, Elohim being merely the plural of Eloah must be passive too. This puts an end to the Hutchinsonian interpretation of this plural word; to the truth of which it is

indispensably requisite, that the word Elohim should Of this the ablest supporters of

signify actively. that interpretation are themselves so sensible, that one of them, a man of sound piety and extensive learning, and a critic of no common penetration, but of too fiery a zeal, scruples not to pronounce the poor Jew accursed, whose "cursed hand first applied the Cholem to the "conceiving that this was done with the fraudulent design of disguising the active signification of the word. He allowed himself not to recollect, that the absence of the Vau in the plural word makes it not of necessity active, any more than the presence of the Vau or of the Cholem, makes either it, or the singular Eloah passive. He considered not that the absence in the plural word of the Vau which appears in the singular, is to be accounted for from that custom of the language, very justly remarked by Dr. Geddes, that the accession of a new syllable to a word usually eliminates a Vau. But then, by a rule laid down by the Jewish grammarians (not without exceptions) in nouns making the last syllable in the singular in 1, though the Vau may disappear, the Cholem remains. According to this rule, the anomaly of this word, if indeed it be at all anomalous, will not consist in

the introduction of the Cholem point, but rather in the suppression of the sustaining Vau: and we may safely acquit the honest Jew of any ill design in supplying the Cholem. Upon the whole, the interpretation which the school of Hutchinson has devised of these two words, is inconsistent with itself in its different branches. The word Eloah, for any thing in the form of the word, may be either active or passive. If it be passive, as these critics would have it, then the plural Elohim must be passive too; and there is an end of their interpretation of that word founded on its supposed active meaning. Again, the plural Elohim, for any thing in the form of the word may be either active or passive. If it be active, as these critics would have it, then the singular Eloah must be active too; and there is an end of the interpretation founded upon its supposed passive meaning.

These insuperable difficulties lie in the way of the Hutchinsonian scheme of interpretation, otherwise, as far as it regards the plural word at least, in itself very plausible; but these are the difficulties it has to encounter, even upon the supposition that the etymology on which it is founded, deriving both the words in question from the verb "to swear," or

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"give an oath," is legitimate. But if the etymology itself should be found to be erroneous, all interpretations built upon it will fall with it to the ground.

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Now that this etymology is false, appears from these considerations. 1. From whatever verb (if from any) the words Eloah [] and Elohim [] are derived, the derivation is from the verb in Kal: for they are not from the Piel, because the is not Dageshed; nor from the Niphal or Hiphil, because no Heemantic is prefixed. 2. If ns, "to swear," be the verb from which they are derived, they are derived from the Kal of a verb quiescent Lamed He.

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For such a verb is . 3. No verbal of the masculine gender, derived from the Kal of a verb quiescent Lamed He, and retaining the final unchanged, is found with a Vau quiescent in Cholem, between the second and third radical; but such is the state of the in the masculine noun Eloah, . Therefore this noun is not a verbal from : and this is further evident, inasmuch as the final is Mappiked, which never happens to the quiescent mutable. 4. With respect to the plural noun Elohim, not to insist upon its connection with, of which it is manifestly the plural, but considering it in itself, this

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