FOOTNOTES.
[3] A solitary voice, in the strict sense of the word, was raised by the Rev. Canon Selwyn at the last meeting of Convocation (March, 1856). The motion was not suited to the mollia tempora fandi, perhaps. But, whatever the cause, there can be no doubt of the fitness of the hands into which the motion fell, or that the day is far from being distant when the question will force itself on the notice of Convocation, in all probability, in another shape.
[4] “Essays, Moral and Literary,” by Dr. Vicesimus Knox. No. XLIX.
[8a] See Psalm xxii. throughout. The difficulties attending the entire application of the psalm to Christ are by no means insuperable. Scott unreservedly refers the whole to Christ. Adam Clarke dissents. Psalm lxix. is for the most part a manifest adumbration of the Messiah; and if the difficulties in the way of the entire application of the Psalm to Christ, presented in verse 5, where he is made apparently to lament his foolishness and his guilt, could be surmounted, a great boon, it is conceived, would be granted to all who desire to understand what they read. The representative scheme, besides being open to other objections, has no explicit authority in the Scriptures to recommend it, and the double sense is now all but universally abandoned. Possibly, if the text will not yield in these cases, there are principles of interpretation involved that await future development.
[8b] Gen. xlix. 21. For, “Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words,” read, “Naphtali is a spreading Pine, that putteth forth goodly boughs.” Psa. xxix. 9. For, “The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests,” read, “The voice of the Lord rendeth the pines, and layeth bare the forests.” So Dr. Lee. To surrender the Bible, body and soul, into the hands of the Massorites, as is required by their pointing of these passages, is surely asking too much. Let the reader peruse the whole of the 29th Psalm, and determine the fitness of the correction for himself, which he may very safely be allowed to do. The former passage, if consistently carried out on the principles of the translators, would run, “Naphtali is a hind let loose, that giveth goodly words,” in which the incongruousness of the metaphor would, if possible, be still more manifest. See Stanley’s “Syria and Palestine,” p. 355.
[10a] See Preface to Herwitz’ “Etymology and Syntax of the Hebrew Language.”
[10b] See Kitto’s Bib. Cyc., art. Chronicles. The whole article is very reassuring, considering the able and accomplished pen from which it proceeds. The writer, Dr. Davidson, to whom the lovers of Biblical philology are under the greatest obligations, deliberately asserts the corruption of the passages in question, and advocates a reading in conformity with the corresponding statements in 2 Samuel and Kings.
[11a] Compare, among other instances in point that might be given, 1 Kings ix. 28 with 2 Chron. viii. 18.
[11b] If no purification of the text should avail us in these cases, it would be advisable to accompany the change in the text with a note in the margin explanatory of the corruptness of the reading that has been superseded.
[13] The change of accent the word undergoes in the original when repeated in the second hemistich, gives marvellous emphasis to the exhortation—an emphasis altogether lost in the translation.
[14] The application of this principle may go some way towards neutralizing the doubts that have been raised as to the identity of the Isaiah of the later portion of the prophecy with the Isaiah of the earlier portion. See chap. lxiv. 10, 11. One thing at least is evident, namely, that the Apostle Paul, who was confessedly well read in Hebrew literature, in his quotations from the latter portion of the prophecy, seems to have had no notion of any other Isaiah than that to whom the whole prophecy is ordinarily ascribed. See Rom. x. 16. In fact, these doubts, now complacently acquiesced in as valid by the Rationalistic School abroad and at home, were equally unknown to all the world till about half a century ago. The general reader may content himself with Dr. Alexander’s candid and able investigation of the question in his recent Commentary on Isaiah.
[15] The uses of the particle ו in combination with the verb. Let the Hebrew student consult the masterly investigation and elucidation of this subject in the Hebrew Grammar recently published by Messrs. Mason and Bernard, Vol. II. chapters 51–55.
[17a] This rendering is faulty as not providing for the emphatic personal pronoun “he” in the original.
[17b] Niphal in the sense of the Hithpael conjugation. See Gen. xvi. 9.
[17c] The original will not admit of this rendering, though the sense is not objectionable.
[17d] There is great difficulty here. The word rendered impious, and inserted in brackets, signifies rich, mostly with an accessory notion of violence and wrong; but the parallel clause, “He made his grave with the wicked,” and the further expression, “He was numbered with the transgressors,” in the last verse, seem to justify the sense here given; and so it has been understood by some rabbins and other commentators, as Luther, Calvin, Gesenius. See Matt. xix. 23. We confess we are not satisfied. The common reading that represents Christ as rewarded with a grave among the rich, because, forsooth, he had done no violence, &c., is surely inadmissible.
[18a] So, ‘A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,’ v. 3.
[18b] Intercedes in the present, because his intercession is a continuous act. This distinction of tense as contradistinguished from the past tense in the use of the preceding verb he bore, expressing a transaction once and finally concluded, so conspicuous in the original, is entirely overlooked in the authorized version; so Calvin, Vitringa, Lowth, Henderson, Jones, Barnes, &c. This concurrence in the interpretation of the authorized version is especially to be wondered at in the more recent of the above-named critics. Messrs. Mason and Bernard give, less happily we think, that he might make, &c. Dr. Alexander, New Jersey, favours the view adopted in the amended version. See his admirable Commentary on Isaiah.
[19] A Hebraism lurks here. So, “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not ANY of his benefits;” and not “all his benefits,” as our translation has it. So again, “And God gave Cain a mark, lest ANY finding him should kill him,” where the same word is rightly rendered. Ps. ciii. 2; Gen. iv. 15.
[24a] Various divisions, both of the Old and New Testaments, were in use from the earliest period, but the present divisions into Chapters and Verses are ascribed, the former, with some hesitation, to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the middle of the thirteenth century; the latter to Robert Stephens, a Frenchmen, about the middle of the sixteenth century. See art. Scripture in Kitto’s Biblical Cyclopædia.
[24b] In an elaborate translation of the whole of this prophecy, in the Hebrew Grammar recently published by Messrs. Mason and Bernard, the authors conceive the opening passage, “Who hath believed our report,” &c., to express the awe and wonder of the kings mentioned in the previous chapter at the events they are supposed to witness, and accordingly they render it, “Who hath believed our hearing” &c., the tidings, that is, that have reached us, the kings aforesaid. But, with all due respect for the translation generally, we are unable to accept this view of the passage before us, conceiving it to be far-fetched, and opposed to the purpose for which, in so many words, it is quoted in the New Testament. See John xii. 37; Rom. x. 16.
[25a] In like manner Jacob, in the course of predicting the future fortunes of his sons, exclaims parenthetically, “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.” Gen. xlix. 18.
[25b] This article has since been republished in a separate form, under the title of the “Present State of the English Bible,” by the Rev. William Harness, A.M. It will well repay repeated perusal by all those who are interested in this pre-eminently interesting question.
[28] Let the reader advert for a moment, in connexion with the argument for the evidences of Christianity, to the ASSUMPTIONS ordinarily and persistently made by Christ in relation to his person and mission, and then conceive of the frightful arrogance involved in these assumptions, supposing them to be unfounded; coupling this thought at the same time with that perfect sobriety of mind and even tenor of a uniformly staid and well-balanced deportment by which he was pre-eminently characterized. We do not find these assumptions in the slightest degree startling or incredible, because they comport in our minds with the WHOLE character of Christ as developed in the gospel. Where the evidence of Messiahship failed among his own countrymen, if there were any failure of evidence, we may advert for the solution, among other considerations, to their blind disregard to the perfect compatibility and harmony of these assumptions with the other features of Messiah as exhibited by Christ. Here are a few of the expressions alluded to, all taken from the earlier chapters of St. John’s Gospel:—
“For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” “That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.” “The bread of God is he which came down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” “And this is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” “I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” “I and my Father are one.” “Jesus saith unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”—How Christ should have preferred SUCH claims without legitimate authority, and ample power to substantiate them, is a question to which we cannot divine an answer.
[30] Some striking illustrations of this position are to be found in the Appendix to Mr. Stanley’s recent volume on Sinai and Palestine. This Appendix consists of a vocabulary of topographical words in Hebrew and English. Great care has been taken in giving the precise English for the corresponding Hebrew term. Referring to the previous part of his work, he says, “I have often had occasion to refer to the richness and precision of the local vocabulary of the Hebrew language. In the authorized version this is unfortunately lost; not so much by the incorrect rendering of any particular word, as by the promiscuous use of the same English word for different Hebrew words, or of different English words for the same Hebrew word.” And again: “The geographical passages of the Bible seem to shine with new light as these words acquire their proper force. How keenly, for example, are we led to notice the early tendency to personify and treat as living creatures the great objects of nature, when we find that the ‘springs’ are the ‘eyes,’ the bright, glistening, life-giving eyes of the thirsty East; that the mountains have not merely summits and sides, but ‘heads,’ ‘shoulders,’ ‘ears,’ ‘ribs,’ ‘loins,’ &c.” This whole Appendix is deeply interesting to the Hebrew student. He must feel at the same time how much the mere English student of Scripture suffers in the absence of the same knowledge.
[31] “They who have access to the Scriptures in the original are . . . endowed with ten talents, compared with which the power of reading them in our authorized version is but one. The right improvement of the one talent will ensure to its possessor the end of his faith, even the salvation of his soul; but this does not render guiltless those who have greater talents if, from supineness and indolence, they neglect to use the enlarged means with which they are gifted for attaining to the knowledge of the truth.”—“Introduction to the Greek Testament, with Grammatical and Exegetical Notes, by William Webster, M.A., and William Francis Wilkinson, M.A.,” p. xvi. The above work has special claims upon that numerous class who, with little time for elaborate research, are glad to obtain the results of a thorough critical investigation of the language and teaching of the New Testament.
[34] The following is from Lewes’s “Life of Goethe,” just published. The words in double inverted commas are those of Goethe himself: ‘“I had a large collection of weapons, and among them a very handsome dagger. This I placed by my bedside every night, and before extinguishing my candle I made various attempts to pierce the sharp point a couple of inches into my breast; but not being able to do it I laughed myself out of the notion,” &c. He played with suicidal thoughts, because he was restless, and suicide was a fashionable speculation of the day,’ &c. . . . In October, 1772 the report reaches him that his Wetzlau friend, Goué, has shot himself. “Write to me at once about Goué,” he says to Kestner, “I honour such an act, and pity mankind,” &c.—Vol. I. p. 197. There is more to this abominable purpose in the sequel. Such was Goethe, a man sprung from the people, not the offspring of an effete noblesse, and at a time of life when the very thought of self-destruction is most alien to all the instincts of nature,—‘a canker in youth,’—and with no taint of constitutional melancholy in his system. Goethe’s genius was a sea of glass, capable of reflecting the rays cast upon it from without with unusual brilliancy; but, unlike our Shakspeare, devoid of independent power of originating new thought. Thus he reflected all his days the prevailing fashion of his time, and thus he but re-enacts the sentimentalism of the hour in his suicidal lucubrations.
[35] The policy of Pericles may be considered in relation to the causes that aggrandize a people. His notion seems to have been that to awaken great deeds in a nation you must supply it with great and noble thoughts. Hence his magnificent public buildings, his lavish cultivation of the arts, and even the attention he paid to the amusements of the people, to make them subservient to refinement and purity of taste. But æsthetics alone do not make a great people.—See Thuc. II., 38, 39.
[37a] Luke xii. 51.
[37b] Sinai and Palestine, p. 369.