Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/6_200.lzh/6_283.TXT

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revealed to him; and therefore would not have it
placed to anysuch account; this he said in great mo-
desty, and in order to set the king right, and that God
might have all the glory: but for their salces that shall
make known the interpretation to the king ; meaning not
only himself, and his companions concerned with him,
that they might be promoted to honour and dignity,
but the whole body of the Jews in captivity, with
which they were in connexion; that they might meet
with more civil and kind treatment, for the sake of the
God they worshipped, who revealed this secret to the
king: or, but that they might make known, &c {x}.; the
three Persons in the Godhead, as some; the angels, as
others; the ministers of God, as Aben Ezra: or rather
it may be rendered impersonally, but that the inter-
pretation might be made known to the king {y} as by the
Vulgate Latin, as it follows: and that thou nightest
know the thoughts of thy heart; both what they were,
which were forgotten, and the meaning of them.
Vet. 31. Thou, 0 king, sawest, &c.] Or, wast seeing {z};
not with the eyes of his body, but in his fancy and
imagination; as he was dreaming, he thought he saw
such an appearance, so it seemed to him, as follows:
and behold .a great image; or, one great image {a}; not
painted, but a massy statue made of various metals, as
is afterwards declared: such, though not so large as
this, as the king had been used to see, which he had in
his garden and palace, and which he worshipped; but
this was of a monstrous size, a perfect colossus, and but
one, though it consisted of various parts; it was in the
form of a great man, as Sandish and Jacchiades observe;
and represented the several monarchies of this world
governed by men; and these being expressed by an
image, shew how vain and delusory, how frail and
transitory, are the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory
of them: this great image, whose brightness was ex-
cellent, stood before thee: right over-against him, and
near him, as he thought; so that he had a full view of
it, and saw it at its full length and bighess, and its
dazzling lustre, arising from the various metals of gold,
silver, brass, and iron, it was made of; which was ex-
ceeding bright, and made it look very majestic: and
the form thereof was terrible; either there was some-
thing in the countenance menacing and horrid; or the
Whole form, being so gigantic, struck the king with ad-
mintion, and was even terrible to him; and it may
denote the terror that kings, especially arbitrary and
despotic ones, strike their subjects with.
Vet. 32. This image's head was of. fine gold, &c.]
The prophet begins with the superior part of this
image, and descends tq. the lower, because of the
order and condition of the monarchies it represents:
this signifies the Babylontan monarchy, as afterwards'
explained; called the head, being the first and chief
of the monarchies; and compared tofine gold, because
of the glory, excellency, and duration of it: his breast
and his arms of silver; its two arms, including its
hands and its breast, to which they were joined, were
of silver, a metal of less value than gold; designing
the monarchy of the Med¢s and Persians, which are
the two arms, and which centred in Cyrus, who was
by his father a Persian, by his mother a Mede; and
upon whom, after his uncle's death, the whole mon-
archy devolved: his belly. and his thighs of brass; a
baser metal still; this pomts at the Macedontan or
Grecian monarchy, set up by Alexander, signitied by
the belly, for intemperance and luxury; as the two
thighs denote his principal successors, the Selucidae
and Lagi&e, the Syrian and Egyptian kings; and
these of brass, because of the sounding fame of them,
as Jerom.
Ver. 33. His legs of iron, &c.] A coarser metal
than the former, but very strong.; and designs the
strong and potent monarchy of the Romans, the llast
of the four monarchies, governed chiefly by two consuls:
and was divided, in the times of Theodosius, into the
eastern and western empire, which may be signified
by the two legs: his feet part of iron and part of clay;
or some of them of zron, and some o them o 'cla
that is, the ten toes of the feet, which represent the
ten kingdoms the western empire was divided into,
some of which were potent, others weak; for this
cannot be understood of the same feet and toes being
a mixture, composed partly of one, and partly of
the other; since iron and clay will not mix together,
vet. 43. and will not agree with the form of expression.
Jerom interprets this part of the vision of the image to
the same sense, who lived about the time when it was
fulfilling; for in his days was the irruption of the bar-
barous nations into the empire; who often speaks of
them in his writings {}, and of the Roman empire being.
in a weak and ruinous condition on the account of
them. His comment on this text is this, "the fourth
"kingdom, which clearly belongs to the Romans, is
"the iron that breaks and subdues all things; but his
"feet and toes are parly iron, and partly clay, which
"is most manifestly verified at this time;for as in the
"beginning nothing was stronger and harder than the
"Roman empire, so in the end of things nothing
"weaker; when both in civil wars, and against ,livers
"nations, we stand in need of the help of other bar-
"barons people." And whereas he had been blamed
for giving this sense of the passage, he vindicates him-
self elsewhere by saying a, ,, if, in the exposition of
"the image, and the difference of its feet and toes, I
"interpret the iron and clay of the Roman kingdom,
"which the Scripture foreshews should be first
"and then weak, let them not iml.,,ut,-, it to me, but
"to the prophet; for so we must not flatter princes,
"as that the truth of,he holy Scriptures should be
"neglected; nor is the general disputation of one
"person an injury';" that is, of any great moment to
the government.
Ver. 34. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out with-

{x} \^Nwedwhy-Nhl\^ sed ut notificarent, Pagninus, Montanus; indicent,
Vatablus.
{y} Sed ut interpretatio regi manifesta fieret, V. L.; eo fine ut indice-
tur, De Dieu.
{z} \^tywh hzh\^ videns fuisti, Montanus, Michaelis; videns eras, Vatablus.
{a} \^aygv dx Mlu\^ imago una grandis, Pagninus, Montanus; imago
una magna, Junius & Tremellius, Cocceius; simulachrum unum mag-
num, Michaelis.
{b} \^Pox yd Nwhnmw lzrp yd Nwhnm\^ ex illis quidam ex ferro, & excillis
quidam ex luto, Gejerus.
{c} Opera, tom. 1. in Epitaph. Nepotian. fol. 9. I. ad Gerontiam, fol
32. E. & in Epitaph. Fabiolae, fol. 68. H.
{d} Prooem. in Comment. in Esaiam. I. 11. fol. 65.