[85] I think this must be the meaning of ver. 16, if we are to allow that it has any sympathy with vv. 14 and 15. Bredenkamp suggests that the persons meant are themselves the dead. Jehovah has glorified the Church on earth; but the dead below are still in trouble, and pour out prayers (Virgil's "preces fundunt," Æneid, vi., 55), beneath this punishment which God causes to pass on all men (ver. 14). Bredenkamp bases this exegesis chiefly on the word for "prayer," which means chirping or whispering, a kind of voice imputed to the shades by the Hebrews and other ancient peoples. But while this word does originally mean whispering, it is never in Scripture applied to the dead, but, on the other hand, is a frequent name for divining or incantation. I therefore have felt compelled to understand it as used in this passage of the living, whose only resource in face of death—Goa's discipline par excellence—is to pour out incantations. If it be objected that the prophet would scarcely parallel the ordinary incantations on behalf of the dead with supplications to Jehovah, the answer is that he is talking poetically or popularly.
[86] English version, fallen; i.e., like our expression for the birth of animals, dropped.
[87] Technical Hebrew word for the inhabitants of the underworld—the shades.
[88] Extracted from the Assyrian Descent of Istar to Hades (Dr. Jeremias' German translation, p. 11, and Records of the Past, i., 145).
[89] Cf. James i. 17.
Transcriber's note:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been preserved except in obvious cases of typographical error.
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