PEBBLE IV.
"The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim; afterwards shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days." Hos. iii, 4, 5.
"I will set up one shepherd over them, even my servant David, he shall feed [or govern] them, and he shall be their shepherd: and I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David, a prince among them." Ezech, ch. xxxiv. 23.
"David my servant shall be king over them, and there shall be one shepherd,"———" my servant David shall be their Prince for ever." Ezek. ch, xxxvii. 24, 25.
"They shall serve Jehovah their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto [or for] them." Jer. xxx. 9.
"Incline your ear and come unto me: hear and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold I have given him for a witness, to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples." Is. Iv. 3, 4.
From such passages I inferred, in my first publication, that the name of the true Messiah, was to be DAVID, and not Jesus. To avoid the force of these passages Mr. Everett has recourse to allegory and analogy.
Jesus is prophecied of in these passages, says he, by the name of DAVID, because "there was an analogy between these two distinguished servants of God. David, from a low and humble estate, was raised to be the founder of the temporal glories of his kingdom; and Christ, not less humble in his origin, was the author of the spiritual distinction of Israel; David was the most illustrious political and Christ the most distinguished moral instrument of the Lord. David was commanded to entrust to his successor the election of the famous temple, which was the centre of the Jewish worship; and Christ has founded through the agency of his apostles that CHURCH by which his religion has been preserved, and diffused in the world."
"To laugh, were want of dignity, or grace, "And to be grave exceeds all power of face."
I assure Mr. Everett, that the days of Type and FIGURE are gone by, and have been succeeded among Biblical Critics by a stricter style of reasoning, and are now considered as "pious whims."[fn76]