<( 



112 



litish Forces referred to, as was common in scripture, by their 

 most appropriate sign — their mihtary banner ; which must be 

 plainly understood to have contained " animalia" — to have been 

 a compound of various animal representations. But, further, the 

 Psalm proceeds with the praises of the Lord of Hosts, and rises 

 to the following strain,§ " the chariots of God are twenty thou- 

 sand, even thousands of angels." The word which is here 

 translated, " thousands of angels," (which by the way St. Je- 

 rome has rendered " milleni pacificorum," a term of dubious ap- 

 plication, and meaning saints, rather than angels,) is shenan ;* 

 and is formed of four letters, the initials to Hebrew words, which 

 signify, a Bull, an Eagle, a Lion, and a Man — occurring no where 

 else in Scripture thus compounded. Does not, then, this word 

 seem to have been itself an hieroglyphic, used at once to express 

 the hieroglyphic which is under our consideration, and its an- 

 titype the company of the saints in heaven ? that " great multi- 

 " tude which no man could number," which is similarly placed 

 and occupied in the Revelations \-\ and of which we are told, 

 in the parallel passages of Ezekiel, that " the| voice of their 



§ V. 17.. I am indebted to the Vice Provost for some of the most important of these sug- 

 gestions. 



* Shin, Nun, Aleph, and Nun — the initials of Shor, a bull ; Neshar, an eagle ; Argai, a 

 lion ; and Nin, a son. 



t C. 7. 9. 



J C. 1.3. Bishop Horsley translates the sentence in question, " Tlie Captain of the blessed 

 isover them ;"and objects to "Chariots," mistaking, as I conceive, the metaphor, by consi- 

 dering it too literally ; his translation admits equally of his objections. He makes the thou- 

 sands of angels, '' 10000 pair: " forming thus a further analogy to the Cherubim, of which 

 there were two compound figures. I shall here again refer to the note of Welstein quoted 

 before, and to that on v 11. of the same chapter. He shews the connection in Rabinnical 

 tradition between the four animals and the angels — " Quatuor caterva angelorum Deum 

 " laudant; la. est Michaelis a dextris ; altera Gabrielis a sinistris ; 3a. Urielis ante ipsum ; 4». 

 " Raphaelis post ipsum ; shechina Dei vero in medio est," &c. 



