DEVARIM 28

Words [of Moses]

15 But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of Yahweh thy Elohim, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:

The punishment of the nation extends over the period of its history from the death of the Elders who outlived Joshua, or the eleventh generation from Abraham, to the apocalypse of Jesus in power and great glory; that is, ad-olahm: a period of about 3350 [3450 in 1948 partial restoration] years, as far as it has already progressed.

24 Yahweh shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

A removal, as of the Ten Tribes, into all the kingdoms of the earth, with all its attendant evils and consequents—verses 25–35;

25 Yahweh shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way [derech echad] against them, and flee seven ways [shivah derakhim] before them: and shalt be removed [an object of horror] into [ unto] all the kingdoms of the earth.

Whether we take the inroads of the Amorites, Midianites, Philistines, etc., who repeatedly brought Israel into affliction because of their sins; or the formidable invasions of the Egyptian Necho or the Assyrian Shalmaneser, and Sennacherib; or the conquest effected by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; or the final destruction of the Jewish polity by Vespasian and Titus of Rome; we know, as a matter of fact, that all these adversaries acted from an ordinary lust of spoil and military glory and without any idea of carrying out the purposes of Yahweh.

This is a matter of notoriety and need not be argued.

The Ways of Providence Ch 11.

36 Yahweh shall bring thee, and thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone.

Moses' prediction of the Babylonish captivity as distinguished from the Roman is discerned by the declaration, that Yahweh should bring the nation and its king unto a nation unknown to Moses and his generation, and their fathers

At the time of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, they had "no other king than Cæsar," according to their own saying; their rightful king, whom they had crucified, being "at the right hand of power," where no enemy could reach him.

But, in the days of Babylon, they had kings of the house of David on the throne of Judah, the last three of whom, namely: Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, were all carried off to Babylon, with the princes and nobles of the state.

This conquering and destroying nation was unknown to Moses and his contemporaries; for although Babylon existed in his day, it was not then a "nation," or power nationally organized; and Israel, consequently, had not known it as one nation knows another in commerce and war.

Conquest by the Greco-Latin Horn of the Goat, commonly styled, the Roman Power—verses 48–52;

48 Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which Yahweh shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

As to the Roman Power, Moses treats of that as "a Yoke of Iron;" a nation far off from Palestine, and at "the end of the earth"—not of the globe; but at the end of the Oriental System of Powers of which the Holy Land would then be a part; a nation, whose ensign would be the eagle, speaking a language not of Hebrew relationship, and of great fierceness.

This was one of those "Fowls of the Air" and "Beasts of the Earth," that Moses predicted should devour Israel's carcase. "Thy carcase," says he to the Tribes,

"shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away"—vers. 26.

This has been notably fulfilled in the blood-stained history of the Commonwealth of Israel to this day. The body politic, or "carcase," of the people has been devoured by the most ferocious beasts. In the words of Jeremiah,

"Israel is a scattered sheep; the Lions have driven him away; first the King of Assyria hath devoured him; and last, this Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, hath broken his bones"—c. 50:17:

and since then, the Bear, the Leopard, and the Eagle, have ravened upon the lifeless carcase of the nation—a corpse, destitute of spiritual, ecclesiastical, and civil existence in Moses or in Christ—dead in trespasses and sins; and cursed by the law; not because they do not continue in all things written in its book, but because they violate it in all its points.

The Spirit in Moses declared that He would put a Yoke of Iron upon Israel's neck until he had destroyed their power. The same Spirit a thousand years afterwards, in Dan. 2:40, explains that that Iron Power was

"a fourth kingdom strong as iron, because that iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things; and as iron that breaketh all, it shall break in pieces and shatter these"

—the three dominions preceding it to which Israel was subject. History has proved this Iron-Power, incorporated into Nebuchadnezzar's image, the Band around the stump of the Babylonian Tree, and the Fourth Beast with Great Iron Teeth, to be the Italian Power, whose legions bore aloft the Eagle as their military ensign.

As Moses and Daniel agree, it was

"dreadful, and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet; which had Claws of Brass"—Dan. 7:7, 19.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Jun 1859

49 Yahweh shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth [ ketzeh ha'aretz], as swift as the eagle [nesher] flieth; a nation whose tongue [lashon] thou shalt not understand;

But, what was represented by this great bird of prey? The original is quite emphatic - ho aetos ho megas, the Eagle which is the great one...Rome was the eagle's head; Italy, its body; and the Roman Africa and the regions of the Alps, Pyrennees, Britain, Bulgaria, Thrace, Asia Minor, and Armenia its wings or extremities. The eagle is the well-known symbol of the Roman Power.

This cannot refer to the Eagle of Nineveh and Babylon; because these eagle powers did not come "from the end of the earth" against Israel; and because they understood the tongue spoken by the Assyrians and Chaldeans.

"The end", not ends "of the earth" in regard to Palestine, was Chittim, or Italy; whose ships came against Asshur, when Antiochus, king of Assyria, invaded Egypt (Dan. 11:30). Israel did not understand the tongue of Chittim, which is known as that of the Roman Eagle, the Latin, between which and the Hebrew there is no family likeness.

This eagle nation was to come against them as a bird of prey to devour their body-politic, and to scatter them among all peoples, because they did not fear that

"glorious and fearful name, YAHWEH Elohim."

This was accomplished by the Roman legions under Titus, A.D. 70; predictive of which, YAHWEH Elohim, in fleshly manifestation, said,

"wheresoever the carcass is, there shall the Eagles be gathered together" (Matt.24:38).

Eureka 12.24

While occupying Palestine, the Carnal Israel were the kingdom of the Deity under the Mosaic Constitution; and the throne upon which David and Solomon reigned in Jerusalem was "the throne of Yahweh."

Deity permitted them to continue in the land so long as the constitution was respected; and there were enough "Israelites indeed" among them, to preserve the nation from putrefaction. These were the real, spiritual, life of the nation -- the salt of the land; and when they became insipid; or, when they, as the chosen generation, died off from the arena, the nation became "a carcase," fit only for the talons of the Roman Eagle, according to the predictions of Moses, Daniel and Christ (Deut. xxviii. 49; Dan. viii. 10-12,24; Matt. xxiv. 28).

Eureka 7.4.

58 If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, Yahweh thy Elohim;

"...the Glorious and Fearful Name, YAHWEH Elohim" (Deut. xxviii. 58).

The multitude, John says, no one is competent to compute. It is the multitude of "the redeemed from among men, the first-fruits unto the Deity and to the Lamb" (xiv. 4) the incorruptible and deathless seed promised to Abraham, who should be countless as the stars (Gen. xv. 5).

This human incompetency for the calculation shows that the number 144,000 is not the real, but only the representative, number of the redeemed. Every saved individual of the unknown number redeemed will be one of the 144,000 sealed ones; he will be an element of the 144 cubits; which embrace within their limits the 144,000 furlongs; for these are the square of the root within which the innumerable multitude is enclosed.

Eureka 7.11

"the glorious and fearful Name, YAHWEH Elohim:" for the repudiation and blasphemy of which Judah and Benjamin, with a multitijde of Levi, have been banished from their country, and tormented among the Nations.

Eureka 13.10.

63 And it shall come to pass, that as Yahweh rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so Yahweh will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.

The condition of their tenancy was their good behaviour.

If they served God according to the law of the land He had given, He would bless them in their basket and store; but if they served other gods, He would let in the worshippers of those gods upon them, and expel them from the country. Israel has rebelled, and therefore they are in dispersion, until the time appointed shall come to remember the covenant made with the fathers, and, therefore to remember the land (Lev. 26:40-42).

The national tenancy of Canaan under the law being leasehold, no purchases of freehold estates could be made in the land. If Israel had been a freeholder, the case would have been different. But the land belonged to the Lord; and they had no more right to grant it away in parcels for ever, than the tenant under a twenty-one years' lease has to cut up his holding into lots, and sell them to purchasers forever.

Israel were the Lord's tenants; and the law said to them on the part of their Landlord, "the land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is Mine, and ye are strangers and sojourners with Me;" so that "in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land."

Hence, if poverty compelled a man to sell his farm, it was always redeemable by himself, or kin, according to certain conditions; but, if neither could raise the money to redeem, the estate was not lost to the original owner; for though it remained in the hands of the purchaser he was obliged to return it for nothing at the year of jubilee (Lev. 25:23-28).

Even under the new constitution, when the nation obtains everlasting possession, the servants of the Prince will have to surrender His territorial gifts at the year of liberty; while His sons will possess them for ever (Ezek. 46:16-18).

The covenant of promise confers a more extensive holding of the country than the law of Moses. At no time of their occupation did Israel possess all the land from the Euphrates to the Nile, as promised in the covenant; and even if they had, such holding would not have been in the sense of the covenant, for they have not held possession according to the limits defined "for ever."

"All the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession" is the promise; but the indisputable fact is, that Israel have only possessed a part of it for a limited and turbulent period. In Solomon's days when the nation was at its zenith under the law, the land was jointly possessed by Israel, the Tyrians, and the remains of the Hittites, Amorites, Perrizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, &c.; but when the age of the covenant arrives, Israel under Shiloh will possess it all; "and there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Hosts" (2 Chron.8:7; Zech.14:21).

Elpis Israel II. 2.4