[255] English version, trees of the field, but the field is the country beyond the bounds of cultivation; and as beasts of the field means wild beasts, so this means wild trees,—unforced, unaided by man's labour.
[256] Neh. xiii.
[257] The original is a hand; a term applied (perhaps because it consisted of tapering stones) to an index, or monument of victory, 1 Sam. xv. 12; or to a sepulchral monument, 2 Sam. xviii. 18.
[258] See vol. i., pp. 363, 364.
[259] So Ewald, Cheyne and Briggs. Ewald takes lvi. 9-lvii. 11a as an interruption, borrowed from an earlier prophet in a time of persecution, of the exilic prophecy, which goes on smoothly from lvi. 8 to lvii. 11b. We have seen that it is an error to suppose that lvi. 9-lvii. rose from a time of persecution.
[260] Ezek. xxi.; cf. xxxiii. 30 f.
[261] Delitzsch.
[262] Mishpat and mishpatim, cf. p. [299].
[263] Such as is also expressed by exiles in Psalms xlii., xliii. and lxiii., but there with what spiritual temper, here with what a hard legal conception of righteousness.