Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/6_500.lzh/6_576.TXT

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all men, even unto the ends of the earth, when his
Gospel shall be preached and spread ,everywhere;
when his kingdom-shall be enlarged, and be from sea
tosea, 'andfrom the river to the ends of the earth;
even then shall..he appear to be a 'great King over all
the earth, and,the great Shepherd of the sheep, the
man,. Jehovah S fellow | and to have such a flock, and
so large, as never any had; when there will. be one
fold, and one shepherd; for this prophecy respects the
latter-day glory. Kimchi'S gloss is," the name of the
"Messiah shall be mugallied, after the judgment of
"the wicked."
Ver. 5. And this man shall be the peace, &c.] The
word man is not in the text, only this; and refers to
the. person before spoken of, who was to be born in
Beth-lehem, to be the ruler in Israel, that should stand
and feed his people, and should be great to the ends
of the earth; and is no other than the Messiah, as
Kimchi, and other Jewish writers, own,' Kimchi's
note is, "this peace respects the Messiah; for he shall
"be the cause or author of peace; as it is said, he
 "shall speak peace unto the Heathen, Zech. ix. 10 ;"
and R. Isaac {x} expresses his sense of the words in
much the same language ;. and it is an observation the
Jews sometimes make, and which they give as a sign
of the Messiah's coming, "when you see a Persian
"horse bound in the land of Israel, look for the feet
"of the Messiah ;" which is the sense of Mic. v. 5.
this shall be the peace, when the Assyrian comes into our
land {y}, &c.; so Jesus the true Messiah is called our
peace, Ephes. ii. 14. and is. the cause and author of peace,
not only between Jew and Gentile, but between God
and men; which he has made by the blood of his cross,
and speaks 'and gives peace to men; and he is the
author of peace in his churches, whose kingdom is a
kingdom of peace, of which there will be an abundance
in the latter day; for all which he would not be suf-
ficient was he a mere man; though it was proper he
should be a man, that he might .have blood to shed, a
body to offer up, and in it die to procure peace; and
yet be more than a man, God also, to put virtue and
efficacy into what he did and suffered to obtain it, as
well as to secure and continue the peace of his people,
and preserve them from all their enemies: when the
Assyrian shall come into our land; not Sennacherib
king of Assyria; though by the invasion of Judea, and
siege of Jerusalem, he might have lately been con-
cerned in, and by reason of the terror which that had
raised in the people;.the Assyrian may be here put for
any powerful. enemy of the people of God in after-
times'; or Satan, and his principalities and powers,
even all the powers of darkness Christ our peace-
maker engaged with, at the time he made peace by
his sufferings and death; and perhaps may chiefly
design the Turk, the Oog and Magog of Ezekiel, as
Mr. Mede {z} thinks, that will enter into the land of Ju-
des, in order to take it out of the hands of the Jews,
who will be possessed of it upon their conversion to
Christ; but he by his instruments will secure to them
the possession of it, and their peace and prosperity in
it: dad when he shall tread in our palaces ; the palaces
of our princes, and nobles, and great. men, at least at-
tempt to do it: then shall we raise against him; the
7Assyrian, or whatsoever enemy is meant by.him: or,
with him, that fis, the Messiah, as Kimchi and others {}
interpret it. The Targum is, "then will we appoint
"Over uS '" Which sense the above writer wonders at,
as being contrary to the Hebrew text: seven shepherds,
and eight principal men; that is, many, as the phrase
is used in Ecci. xi. 2. to which passage Aben Ezra
and Kimchi refer us; these are, as the last-mentioned
'writer and others say {b}, the princes of the. Messiah;
and, according' to the ancient {c} Jewish Rabbins, the
seven shepherds are particularly these, David in the
midst, Adam, Seth, Methuselah, on his right hand
(Kimchi has it, Seth, Enoch, and Methuselah), and
Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, on his left hand; and the
eight principal men are, Jesse, Saul, Samuel, .&m, os,
Zephaniah, Zedekiah (in Kimchi and .Rabbot tis
Hezekiah), Elias, and Messiah; but, as Aben Ezra, not
fifteen persons are designed, at most but eight, ac-
cording to this form of speech in Prov. xxx. l5, 18, 2l,
24, 29. Amos i. 3. &c. Calmet a takes thos. e seven or
eight shepherds to he the seven princes confederate with
Darius the son of Hystaspes, who killed Smerdis the
Magian, who had possessed himself of the empire of
the Persians, after the death of Cambyses; but Smerdis
was not an Assyrian, nor is the kingdom of Persia
here meant, but the land of Judea; and .the prophecy
respects the times of the Messiah, who should appear
there, and where Wbuld be raised up men to support
his interest: and if conjecture may be allowed, as this
may be understood of the apostles and fir&t preachers
of the Gospel, the princes of the Messiah, who were
raised up, at the prayer and request of the church, to
oppose Satan and his emissaries, in the first times of
the Gospel; by these may be meant the writers of the
New Testament, the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, and the Apostles Peter, James, and
Jude, which make the seven shepherds; and if you
add to these the Apostle Paul, they will make eight
pri'ncipal men;-or rather I 'should' think the seveh
angels are pointed at, that shall pourq out the last
plagues on theantichristian states; to which, if another
angel is added, that will proclaim the fall of Babylon,
the same number will be made Up; see Rev. xvi. 1.
and' xviii. 1. and who will assist the Jews against the
Turks, when they shali attempt' to dispossess them of
their land, they shall again inherit.
Ver. 6. And they shall waste the land of Assyria with
the sword, &c.] Or feed · upon it with the sword,
destroy the inhabitants of it; either spiritually subdue
the nations of the world to the-obedience of Christ,
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;
the preaching of the Gospel, the ministry of the
apostles, and others, in the Gentile world; see 2 Cor.
x. 3, 4, 5. Ephes. vi. !7. or literally, meaning that the
angels of the vials, the Christian princes, shall destroy


{x} Ut supra.
{y} Echa Rabbati, fol. 48. 3.
{z} Works, l. 4. Ep. 41. p. 796.
{a} Vid. Chizzuk Emunah, par. 1. p. 232.
{b} lbid.
{c} T. Bab. Succa, fol. 52. 2. Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 26. 3.
{d} Dictionary, in the word Shepherds.
{e} \^werw\^ & depascent, Montanus, Drusius; pascent, Piscator, Grotius,
Cocceius.