means of correcting it suggested; the prophecy, generally expressed as it is, and construed according to the prima facie sense and meaning of its words, would lead to very erroneous results. Let the standard of the computation of time in the prophecy be supposed the prophetical or Chaldaic year, as it may; still the standard of computation which must measure the absolute length of time embraced by it, or the exact interval comprehended between the point where it begins and the point where it ends, will be after all the solar or natural year: for there is no absolute measure of time, and of the exact interval comprehended between one event and another, but that. These two standards are not the same; yet the one must be reduced to the other, if the prophecy is to be understood: for if the prophecy reckons by prophetical time, but the course of events is determined by solar time, the exact interval comprehended between the point where it sets out, and the point where it ends, can never be ascertained without an adjustment of the one to the other. To reduce prophetical years of 360 days each, to solar years of 365 days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, and fiftyone seconds, (which is the standard of the mean length of the solar or tropical year, according to Delambre,) is a work which can scarce ever be exactly effected, because the two standards of time in question are more or less incommensurable; so that such and such a number of years of the former description can never be exactly expressed by such and such a number of years of the latter. But whether a given number of prophetical years admitted of being reduced to a perfect equality to a corresponding number of solar years, or not; it may fairly be taken for granted, that the prophecy would be addressed from the first to hearers or readers, and would be expected to be studied from the first, and more or less understood, by hearers

and readers, multitudes of whom would never be capable of such reduction-would never be possessed of astronomical skill and information sufficient to qualify them for the task. It is much to be doubted, indeed, whether there was any where in the world, at the time of the delivery of this prophecy, or ever would be, before the time of its fulfilment arrived, a sufficient degree of astronomical skill and proficiency to qualify for the task of reducing 490 prophetical years of nominal time, to the corresponding number of solar years of actual time: for the knowledge of the true length of the solar or natural year, such as it is possessed by moderns, as the result of the combined labours and observations of more than four thousand years, would be requisite for that purpose. Yet without this knowledge, and without this previous adjustment of one of these standards of reckoning to the other; however plainly the prophecy might have specified the number of its weeks of years, it never could be understood what was the absolute length of time intended by it: however clearly it might have been defined where the decursus of its weeks was to begin, it never could be foreseen where they were destined to end. The prophecy, therefore, would lose its chief value, and certainly its most characteristic feature of distinction; which is that of serving as a chronological record of the future, and fixing events and their seasons with historical precision beforehand. And all this, as the necessary consequence of employing an anomalous standard of time, which had nothing to answer to it either in the solar or the lunar motions, over a space of nearly five hundred years to come; where, the longer the interval measured by the fictitious standard, the greater the deviation from the interval actually measured by the true; when the whole might so easily have been obviated,

and every end and purpose contemplated by this disclosure of the future, and this definition of times and seasons beforehand, so effectually provided for, by speaking in conformity to the common use of words, and intending to be understood in the common acceptation of them.

Again, supposing the number of weeks in the prophecy to be seventy, or seventy and one half; supposing these weeks continuous; supposing them to be weeks of years; and supposing these years to be common or natural, in the ordinary sense of the word: the next point for preliminary consideration would be, Where must they be considered to begin, and where must they be supposed to end? that is, though the prophecy itself may supply no date, as such, to mark its own commencement or its own termination, which was hardly to be expected; it would still be for us to consider beforehand, whether it may not possibly supply something else, which may serve the same purpose as a numeral note of time might have done.

Now to consider each of these questions distinctlysince the beginning of a certain interval of time is one thing, and the termination of it is another-we should have to determine in the first place, whether it might not be safely collected from the Hebrew text, supported by the concurrence of all the ancient versions, beforehand; that the particular event, defined by the prophecy as the point of departure from which the whole series of its weeks was to take its rise, was the going forth of some word or commandment: and in the next place, whether by this word or commandment, it might not be fairly presumed some decree or edict, properly so called, was intended; and by the going forth of the word or commandment, the publishing, issuing, or promulgating the edict or decree in

question. And as all edicts or decrees, properly so called, are the work of persons in authority, it would have to be considered whether the going forth of a word of this description could have any other meaning than the publishing of the formal act of some one of the reigning princes, or of those in authority under them; as alone competent to the promulgation of edicts or decrees as such.

And supposing this question to have been decided in the affirmative, it would be necessary, in the next place, to consider, Whether the object or purpose, for which this word is supposed to go forth in the prophecy, that is, this edict of some one of the reigning princes of the time, to be issued, is not so plainly defined, that we might safely undertake beforehand to say what it must be? The English version has declared this object to be, "To restore and to build Jerusalem;" the version of Theodotion to be, тоû ажокριθῆναι καὶ οἰκοδομῆσαι Ἱερουσαλήμ; the Vulgate or Jerome's, Ut iterum ædificetur Jerusalem: between none of which and the rest is there any difference except what is merely verbal; one and the same part of the original, in this instance, being construed by our translators in the sense of to restore, by Theodotion, and as it would seem the Septuagint, in the sense of to answer, by Jerome or the Vulgate as simply equivalent to the idiomatic Hebrew mode of expressing the idea of again: while in understanding the general object or purpose of which this restoring or this answering was a part, and an auxiliary part, to be one and the same, viz. the building of Jerusalem, all these authorities are agreed *. And that this one object or *The origin of the version of Theodotion, in this instance, and of the Septuagint, if that also was τοῦ ἀποκριθῆναι, like his, is very

easily explained, if we consider the idiomatic Hebrew way of expressing ἀποκριθῆναι in Greek.

to cause a * השיב דבר This is by

purpose must have been the main thing contemplated in the going forth of the word, or the promulgation of the edict in question, originally, may be fairly collected from the renewed allusion to it, as a thing not simply to be contemplated, but to be actually consummated, which occurs in the course of the prophecy, directly after: "The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times :" where also, however much our different versions may vary in the sense they have given to the last words of this declaration, they are all agreed in their rendering of the allusion to the building again of the street, and the wall. This second allusion to such a topic ascertains and defines still more clearly the object for which it was first mentioned. It would not be said that the street and the wall should be built again, if one thing at least, contemplated by all that was supposed to have preceded, were not that they might be built again: but it might well be so said, if it was.

Among the most obvious presumptions, then, which we might form beforehand, and bring with us to the further examination of this memorable prophecy, one would be this: That whatever be the length of time embraced by it, and wheresoever it might be found to end, it could not take its rise from an earlier point of time, than the going forth of some decree of some one of the reigning princes of the time, with this specific object in view, to restore and to build Jerusalem; or, as we might render the first of these words, "To

word to return"—that is, to answer. Hence, as the first words of the 25th verse, were, From going forth of a word, w, "to cause to return," it was the easiest of all constructions to suppose an ellipsis of 727: as if the word went forth to cause a

word to return, that is, to procure an answer: which is the construction that Theodotion and the Septuagint seem to have put upon the text.

*, the proper meaning of which is rather "to cause to return," than to restore. Among