The events foreshewn, are the death of Christ; the dissolution of the old, and the founding of the new covenant; the rejection of this latter by the great body of the Jewish nation, and their immediate forfeiture of the benefits it affords; with other circumstances attending these events, such as the betrayal of Christ for thirty pieces of silver; the employment of this money in the purchase of the potter’s field; the separation of the Jews, who rejected Christ, from those who received him; and the evils entailed upon those who, having rejected the true, followed after false Messiahs. These are the circumstances shadowed forth in the prophecy; but to give a consistent explanation of every part of it, and to shew the exact adaptation of the events to the prediction, constitute the difficulty. The typical actions of the prophet, consist in his taking two staves, or crooks; first affixing to each of them a significant denomination, and then breaking them in succession; accompanying this action with explanations, declaratory of the purport of his doing so. Yet is the whole highly mystical, and in parts so obscure, that Dr. Blayney acknowledges he cannot solve these difficulties; an avowal that would have been rendered unnecessary, had his predecessor Lowth been more successful. Their failure seems chiefly to have arisen from their misconceiving, in the first place, whom the prophet here personates in the character of the shepherd; and, in the next, what the staves are intended to represent; for the general purport of the whole, is rightly understood by both to be an allusion to the death of Christ, and the completion of his mission. Accordingly, Lowth supposes the shepherd to personate the Messiah, as the shepherd of his flock. But the Messiah is throughout the person spoken of, rather than the speaker, as will presently appear. Blayney also considers the prophet as a type of the Messiah; but supposes him sometimes to speak in his own name, as being himself the shepherd. Not to dwell on the want of consistency in this change of character, its avowed inadequacy to furnish the solution required, is alone a sufficient refutation of it. That the prophet is the actual speaker is clear, but he speaks in the name of the Almighty, as is distinctly declared three times at least in the present chapter. The great Shepherd is then no other than God himself; and all mankind are his flock. Who are the staves, or crooks, we have next to inquire.