being altered into משע (or עשמ) a Saviour; while, according to Lowth, all that here relates to the Messiah is to be regarded as a rhapsodical digression from the subject of the context. Verse 12. :שובו לבצרון אסירי התקוה גם היום מגיד משנה אשיב לך _Return to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope, even today do I declare that I will repay you double._ Such is the received translation, nor as it now stands, does the sense appear at all ambiguous, signifying, _Return to your prison-house until the day of your promised liberation arrives_; that is, the day of the Messiah’s coming. There can be no doubt who are meant by the prisoners, but the change of number in the personal pronoun, from plural to singular, makes it not improbable that the latter part of this line is addressed to the Messiah, who was apostrophized in the verse preceding. Upon this view the word אסירי (or יריסא) may be rendered, _my prisoners_, instead of _prisoners of hope_, which is rather obscure; and התקוה (or הוקתה) as the imperative hithpael of the verb קוה (or הוק) to wait. And the sense will then be as given in the text; _Return to the strong hold, my prisoners: wait thou till the day I declare that I will repay thee double._ Verse 13. :כי דרכתי לי יהודה קשת מלאתי אפרים ועררתי בניך ציון על בניך יון ושמתיך כחרב גבור _When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, Oh Zion! against thy sons, Oh Greece! and made thee as the sword of a mighty man._ Here כי (or יכ), which signifies _for_, is rendered _when_, thus imposing a future signification on the verbs that follow. This has, no doubt, arisen from a supposed allusion to the subsequent wars of Judas Maccabeus. But Ephraim, or the ten tribes, having no share in those wars, militates against that supposition; and it seems more probable that this verse, instead of designating the _time when_ the promised blessing would be conferred upon the Gentiles, here declares the _reason why_ the Messiah could not be sent to them directly and unconditionally; namely, because he was previously promised to Israel. _For I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow Ephraim_; that is, I have chosen Israel as my people, and appointed them my instruments for the overthrow of paganism. And, accordingly, to the house of Israel he came, and was by some of them received; nor until the great body of that people declined the office, were the Gentiles called in to fill up the ranks, and carry on the spiritual warfare; a warfare which was thenceforward carried on by both in conjunction, for the first Christians still were Jews, though blindness came in part over Israel. Verse 14. :ויהוה עליהם יראה ויצא כברק חצו ואדני יהוה בשופר יתקע והלך בסערות תימן _And the Lord shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning; and the Lord God shall blow the trumpet, and shall go forth with whirlwinds of the South._