ISRAEL. 
31 
Restorer should come, and yet that his coming should sternly reveal the corruptions of 
Judah. 
“ The Loan, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of 
the Covenant, whom ye delight in . . . But who may abide the day of his coming ? and 
who shall stand when he appeareth? . . „ For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as 
an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: . . . But unto 
you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings.” 1 
From the era of the Restoration, Prophecy and Miracle were no more. A sudden stop 
was put, for nearly four hundred years, to those Divine interpositions which had acted 
with such powerful and constant agency on the national career. Judah had now finally 
fallen from her original inhei’itance, and, like the first master of mankind, she was to eat 
her bread in toil, and find the earth fertile only in the thorn and thistle. Yet it is remark¬ 
able, that she offended no more by the especial sin of her past generations; she was never 
again the idolater. And it is not less remarkable, that, as if for the express purpose of 
guarding her against a recurrence of the temptation, she was placed, for nearly two 
hundred years, under the guardianship of the only empire of heathenism, which abhorred 
the worship of images. But her whole career was now to exhibit even more than the 
common casualties of nations. She had descended from her original elevation, and, instead 
of sitting on a height from which only an unclouded heaven spread above her, and the 
tempests which devastated the pagan world rolled beneath her feet, she was to walk 
through the perpetual storm. Her original destination had been sovereignty, she was once 
to shine “ the glory of all kingdoms; ” but she had cast away this inheritance; and she was 
no more to impress the world by grandeur or enlighten it by wisdom; her office henceforth 
was simply, to preserve the “ oracles of God,” to give a melancholy proof of the prophecies 
in her sufferings, and to secure the descent of the Messiah in the line of David. For 
duties like those obscurity was sufficient, yet duration was essential; and of her astonishing 
history, there is no feature more astonishing than her existence for the next five hundred 
years. Perpetually on the verge of dissolution, she still survived; she saw the young and 
vigorous empires of Babylon, Persia, and Macedon successively sink into the grave, yet 
without sharing their mortality; with every disqualification for permanency, a fettered 
vassal, in the presence of vast sovereignties ; a disarmed race surrounded with a world of 
warriors; a helpless province, lying in the highroad of every competitor for the throne of 
Western Asia, she still resisted the principle of decay. Prophecy stood between her and 
the sepulchre; a great prediction was to be fulfilled, and, until then, she was to defy the 
contingencies of the world. 
Jacob, on his death-bed, seventeen hundred years before, had prophesied, “ The Sceptre 
shall not depart from Judah, nor a Lawgiver, from between his feet, until Shiloh come; 
and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” 2 
1 Malachi, iii. 1, &c.; iv. 1, &c. 
2 Genesis, xlix. 10. The commentators have injured this prophecy by overstraining it. Its mean¬ 
ing obviously is, not that a continued sovereignty was to exist in Judah, (which would be equally 
contradictory to history and prophecy), hut, that the throne was not to be ultimately extinguished, 
until the coming of the Shiloh (the Sent), the Messiah. 
