8 Yahweh hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.

Thus, to stretch out a line upon a wall indicates its overthrow, that the measuring line may be extended over the levelled site. If the line be employed with reference to a nation, it imports the levelling of that nation, that it may be trampled under foot.

A nation intensely lined is one long prostrate, the idea of prostration being necessary to a being trodden under foot. Jerusalem, said the king of Israel, shall be trodden under foot of the nations until their times be fulfilled. She was first levelled; she was then kav-kahved, or lined intensely; and so long as that line is stretched out, she remains prostrate and trodden down. The fortunes of Israel and their city are the same.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, May 1853

"Whose land rivers have spoiled." - Isa 18: 7

Rivers overflowing their banks represent invading armies. Speaking of the ten tribes in hostility against Jerusalem and the house of David, Isaiah saith,

"Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Retzin and Remaliah's son; now therefore, behold, Yahweh bringeth up upon them the waters of the river (Euphrates) strong and many, even the King of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks: and he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck,"

Jerusalem alone of all the land being the head out of the water. Israel's land has been laid waste by such rivers as these. Daniel predicted a similar inundation which was to overflow the land subsequently to the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem that was to happen after the cutting off of the Messiah the prince, and at the Roman invasion:

"the end thereof shall be with a flood,"

which he explains of the inundation of war; for he says,

"and until the end of the war desolations are decreed."

He also styles the future invasion of the Holy Land by the Russo-Assyrian king of the north an overflowing. There is nothing nourishing in the overflowing of such rivers; but Dr. Lowth's "learned friend" suggested "nourish" as the meaning of bahzeu, which, as it suited his theory of the land being Egypt or Ethiopia which are fertilised by the Nile, he readily adopted, rendering the sentence

"whose land the rivers have nourished."

Gesenius translates the words asher bahzeu nehahrim aretzu, by "whose land rivers rend", i.e., break up into parts, or divide up. The allusion is to Ethiopia." This is an error; there is no such allusion in the case. The land is Israel's, not Ethiopia; rent, spoiled, or laid waste by the horns of the Gentiles, whose armies have swept over it like floods of mighty streams.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, May 1853