(Continued from page 261.)
2. The Announcement of the King (Chap. 2:).

The magi are warned of God, in a dream, not to return to Herod; and they depart into their own country another way. Then Joseph is similarly warned of impending danger, and flees by divine direction, with the young child and his mother, into Egypt. There is no manifest display of power made. The angels that appeared to announce a Savior do not now reappear to guard the infant King. Everything marks that He has come to take no exceptional place in this way, as distinct from the common lot of men. Nay, it is a necessity of the work which He has come to do that He should stoop to this; and in subjection to these human conditions manifest His exaltation above fallen man. Prophecy, however, has marked Him out all through; and it is that it might be fulfilled that He goes down to Egypt.

But just here we have what calls for special examination. The prophecy to be fulfilled is that of Hosea (ch. 11:i):"Out of Egypt have I called my Son." But this, at first sight, does not seem to be a prophecy at all; and certainly not a prophecy of Christ. Any one looking at it would say it was simply a rebuke of Israel as a nation, for repaying with apostasy and Baal-worship the love which God had shown in their redemption of old. He had taken them out of their bondage and misery, and called them to adoption as His own family among the families of the earth. But how had they repaid it ? "As [the prophets] called them, so they went from them:they sacrificed to Baalam, and burned incense to graven images." This, of course, could only speak of Israel as a nation.

And yet the application to the Lord of the first verse is no mere application. It is not that such a thing took place now in relation to Him who was Son of God by a fuller title, to that which had taken place in regard to His "first-born" Israel. The manner of quotation is much too precise for that. Evidently there is here a far deeper view of prophecy than we are accustomed to. It is common to say that there is here an example of typical prophecy; but we must understand what we mean if we say this. For certainly it could be only in fragments of the national history that there could be any typical reference to the Lord; and what follows in the prophet indicates only entire and emphatic contrast, as we have seen. We must have, therefore, some guiding truth to enable us to distinguish, with any certainty, what is typical and what is not.

Now in Isaiah 49:we have such a principle:for of whom is it written, "Jehovah has called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother has He made mention of my name, . . . and said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified " ? This, one would say, must be the nation; but immediately we hear a Voice that is not the nation's:"Then I said, I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nought and in vain; yet surely my judgment is with Jehovah, and my work with my God."

Now notice the claim:"And now, saith Jehovah, that formed ME from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob again to Him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in Jehovah's eyes, and my God shall be my strength. And He said, It is a light thing that thou shouldst be My Servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel:I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be My salvation unto the ends of the earth."

Here, to a Christian, there can be no doubt of the application. It is Christ alone who fulfills this. But thus He is also the true Servant, formed from the womb, and the Israel in whom God will be glorified. Here Christ and Israel are both identified and distinguished at the same time. Israel, that had failed utterly,- failed even in hearing this glorious Person when He came,- Israel comes to fulfill its destiny only in and through Christ, who comes of Israel; who is (according to the prophetic language) the lowly "Shoot" from the cut down "stem of Jesse," the "Branch" that should "grow out of his roots"; and upon whom, in full complacency, and in sevenfold power, "the Spirit of Jehovah " was to "rest." (Isa. 11:) In Him, the "Son born " to them, Israel nationally is yet to revive. His glory involves their blessing. He begins anew for God their history, purged of its failure and its shame, and thus the necessary application of such passages as that in Hosea, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son."

Yet how differently is it fulfilled in these two cases? For Him there could be no captivity, no "house of bondage." For them this had been the discipline needed, the furnace because of the dross that the Refiner must purge out. Typically, for us all, it speaks of the bondage to sin in our natural state, out of which a divine voice alone can call us. For Him, of all this there was nothing,- could be nothing. Egypt shelters, not ensnares, nor takes captive. He had no natural state to be delivered from. The world of Nature, had He desired it, would have yielded Him all it had. The Voice that called Him out of it, called Him but to the work for which He had come; and so the "favor" even "with man" (Luke 2:52) was exchanged for rejection, as also for one dread hour the "favor with God" was eclipsed in the darkness of abandonment, only to shine out, however, immediately, in the glory of the resurrection and return to heaven.

All, then, should be clear as to the application of Hosea. The next quotation in this chapter, that from Jeremiah, which speaks of Rachel's weeping over her dead, is introduced after a very different manner, then was fulfilled," not " that it might be,." This is really but an application. When Bethlehem mourned her babes slaughtered by Herod, then it was as if Rachel, from her grave close by, were repeating her lamentation. But Rachel must be comforted here also, in a deeper way than in the prophet. He had escaped, who by and by would freely offer Himself to redeem from the power of the grave, and bring back to a better life.

But the days of the Edomite were drawing to an end; and soon the angel of the Lord appeared once more in a dream to Joseph, with words that brought back those that set the face of Moses, the deliverer, toward the people to whom he was commissioned:"they are dead that sought the young child's life." But only one tyrant had succeeded another, so that they do not return to Judea, where Archelaus had begun his short but cruel reign, but into Galilee; and they came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth. In this, too, prophecy was fulfilled,- not a specific one, but the tenor of the prophets generally:"He shall be called a Nazarene."

Galilee means "circle,"or "circuit"; and here was the place in which, though but for a short time, through the unbelief that rejected Him, Israel's lost blessings were to return more gloriously. It was called, as elsewhere stated, "Galilee of the Gentiles," because so full of Gentiles. There the ruin of the people, therefore, was most plainly to be seen; and thus it was the fitting place for grace to be shown. It would be most manifestly grace. So when the child returns, the land is as it were claimed once more – the only place in the New Testament where the expression is used – as "the land of Israel." Such it shall be yet, when it shall be owned as "Immanuel's land."

And this connects with what we had before; and that to which our attention is once again, and more distinctly called, in this summing up of various prophecies:" He shall be called a Nazarene. " This was, of course, a name actually given the Lord; and generally in scorn, from the place in which so large a proportion of His life on earth was spent. Nazareth was in no good repute, especially among the Pharisees and traditionalists. It had no memories, no history, was consecrated by no great names; and its own name-which seems to have been but a feminine form of netzer, a "sprout," or "shoot,"-may even refer to this. It was thus expressive of lowliness, if yet of life, and identical with the word in Isaiah 11:i, where Messiah is spoken of as the "rod" or "shoot out of the stem of Jesse"; and here His greatness and His lowliness are seen together.

The stem is cut down:it is better characterized as that of Jesse than of David; and thus the Son of David comes into no outward state or glory, but the opposite. Yet He comes to revive, and more than revive. He is the "righteous Branch" of Jeremiah (23:5, 33:15), and Zechariah's Branch, Jehovah's Servant, who builds the temple of Jehovah, and bears the glory (ch. 6:12). His stooping is in love and service,- even to death, because His work is resurrection. How great and wonderful is this lowliness, when once we penetrate his real character! – how necessary when once we have understood the need to relieve which He came!

Here, then, is the key to His whole position:for this Branch is to reign, and be a Priest upon His throne. Not Israel's burden only is He lifting, but our own. For Israel, in their long probation, in which they failed so utterly, were only the representatives of men,- of all men,- our's; and therefore ours also is the royal Savior. And this expression-"the Nazarene "-implies all this. Thus He is "called" this, from opposite sides, for opposite reasons. Those who would dishonor Him, those who would honor Him, here unite together. The cross is a death of shame; but it is His glory. Up in the glory of heaven, amid the universal homage there, stands "a Lamb as it had been slain." F. W. G.