Notes To Chapter XII.
Verse 2. :וגם על יהודה יהיה במצור על ירושלם
When they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
Such is the translation in our version, a sense which can in no way be extorted from the words of the text, as every Hebraist must be well aware. The Jew, by inserting the relative who, as understood after the word Judah, renders the passage thus,
And also upon Judah, who shall be in the siege against Jerusalem.
This is certainly no violation of the text, as the relative pronoun is often understood in Hebrew. But still I hold it to be a rule not to insert a relative unless the sense requires it, and I see no such necessity here, as either of the preceding nominatives, namely, the burden of the prophecy, or the cup of trembling, may govern the verb shall be, and thus we have, as I have rendered it, and also upon Judah it shall be, in the [pg 148] siege against Jerusalem; by which I understand the burden shall be upon Judah also.
Verse 3. :אשים אח ירושלם אבן מעמסה לכל העמים
I will make Jerusalem a burden stone for all people.
Here the Jew may probably ask, How can Jerusalem, in the spiritual sense, as signifying true religion, become a burden stone, or a cup of confusion to the heathen? I answer, in every way. In the first place, by frustrating, as it did, all their efforts to suppress and extinguish it;—in the next place, by its opposing and outraging all their worldly feelings, condemning their pride, and teaching humility, requiring them to receive their religion from one whom they despised as the most degraded of human beings, a crucified malefactor;—and, lastly, by stultifying all their previous notions, enjoining the restraint and control of the passions, instead of which their religion sanctified their indulgence as an act of devotion. Thus was Christianity, in every way, a cup of confusion, and a stumbling-stone to the heathen nations.
But against the spiritual exposition of the Old and New Jerusalem, as symbolizing the Old and New Covenant, the Jew may, perhaps, further object, that he was never taught to look for a New Covenant, and that he finds no intimation of it in the Prophets. This being a question of fact, rather than of reasoning, we must look to the Scriptures for the answer.