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true interpretation of the Targumim, Luther, Authorized Version, Delitzsch, and others), Isa. Ixi. 7 and Jer. xvi. 18, where it is stated that Israel has received double for all her sins. The choice of the mystical and sacred number seventy can be no surprise to the student of the Old Testament. Although all these shepherds appear contemporaneously before the Lord when they receive the commission, they shall not pasture together, but one after the other. That God speaks here directly to the shepherds, and not through the medium of angels, as we should expect from the analogy of the rest of the book and from the example of the Old Testament if they were men, and especially heathen rulers, shows conclusively that the shepherds were beings enjoying intimate communication with God, in other words, were angels. An author who but once (14:24 permits even the sacred person of Enoch to go into the presence of God, could under no circumstances have imagined eathen rulers, the oppressors of God’s children, as standing before him, and receiving their orders from his own mouth.—60. According to number, i.e. acertain number. These shepherds were not to act independently, but, like the angels in the Old Testament and in Enoch, were simply executors of God’s will and command. These are functions that a Jew, writing not in the time of the return from the Exile when the heathen Cyrus ad appeared as the instrument in God’s hand for the benefit of his people, but in a time when experience ad exhibited the surrounding heathen nations as the most bitter haters and revilers of Israel's God and persecutors and tormentors of the people, in the time when the cruel scenes inaugurated by Antiochus Epiphanes were still vivid before the author—these are functions, we say, that a Jew at that time could never ave ascribed to Gentile rulers —61. God calls another shepherd, ie. angel, to keep record of the deeds of these seventy shepherds. The “other one” is clearly and evidently an angel, as is seen from 90:22 and 14, probably the archangel Michael, the patron angel of Israel; cf. Dan. x. 4 sqq.—62. Superabundance, GTR, Uebermass, the number slain above those intended by God. These shall be written down that the shepherds may be judged accordingly.— 63. Give them over, i.e. to punishment.—64. These shepherds knowing God’s will that only a certain number should be destroyed are not to be disturbed or advised in their labor. But how 4 1 Ae 4 med 1 aad 1 14 cae 1 1 1 could we suppose that, e.g. Antiochus Epiphanes should have a knowledge of the fact that he was to be an instrument to punish Israel, and should also be able to determine how far the divine will would allow him to go? For this knowledge, presupposed here as the basis of the just judgment of God over the shepherds for the transgression of God’s law, is clearly in possession of these shepherds, according to vs. 59 and 60.—65. Shows that the killing of the sheep consisted in giving them over into the hands of the wild beasts, as also that the shepherds were beings entirely different from the lions. Did the ridiculous incongruity of calling princes and leaders of wild beasts “shepherds” never strike the advocates of the heathen potentate theory? As the lions are in all probability the Assyrians, the author evidently places the beginning of the reign of the shepherds in the time of the struggle of the northern kingdom with Assyria—66. The fall of the two kingdoms is summed up in the attack of the lions and the tigers, the latter being the Chaldeans. The wild boars are the Edomites (cf. vs. 12), who also took part in the destruction of Jerusalem; cf. Obad. 10-12; Lam. iv. 21; Ezek. xxv. 12 sqq.; xxxv. 12 sqq.; Isa. xxxiv. 35; lxiii. 1-4; Ps. cxxxvii. 767, 68. Could no longer see, i.e. the Israelites were led into captivity. This being a break in the history of Israel, he remarks that the sins of the shepherds in this first period of Israel’s humiliation and the partly undeserved sufferings are recorded by the other angel; cf. vs. 61. Cf. also Jer. xii. 9; Ezek. xxxiv. 5, 8; Isa. lvi. 9—71. With the sealing of the book the first scene is closed. How many shepherds pastured, and how long each one pastured, in the period just closed is not mentioned.—72. Embraces the whole period of the captivity, which is stated in round numbers to have been twelve hours. That these twelve hours are to designate the time of the captivity alone is as clear as daylight from the after that, i.e. after the events to the destruction of Jerusalem, just mentioned, had transpired, then a certain number of shepherds pastured till the time when three sheep returned. How Dillmann can say that these hours embrace the time from Jojaqim to Cyrus is incomprehensible. Cyrus is certainly the terminus ad quem, but that Jojaqim is not the terminus a quo is equally certain. Three returned; Dillmann thinks this a corruption for two, i.e. Zerubable and Joshua. If the word three is a change made by the Ethiopic translator, he probably means by this third one not Nehemiah or Ezra, but Jeremiah. The Ethiopic church has in many of her biblical codices a unique Book of Baruch, that claims inspiration and was