The staff, or crook, is the shepherd’s implement, with which he tends his flock, protecting them on the one hand, or correcting them on the other. Hence the two names adapted to the two-fold office, which might be rendered Pleasure and Pain, instead of Beauty and Bands; but there is no occasion to alter the translation, which is equally literal, and equally appropriate as it stands. It is, perhaps, worthy of note, that two staves were once in use for these different purposes. What are these staves then intended to represent? In a word, God being the Shepherd, and all mankind his flock, the staves appear to be typical of _Christ_ and _Israel_; these being the agents employed, the great instruments in the hands of God, in accomplishing the work of man’s redemption, from the darkness of idolatry to the light of true religion. One staff being _Israel_, with whom was founded the Old Covenant, the express object of which was the abolition of idolatry; a covenant which is continually called the “_bondage of the law_;” and the other staff, _Christ_, the founder of the New Covenant, called “_the beauty of holiness_” who declared that his yoke was easy, or pleasant; thus the name will be equally appropriate, whichever translation is adopted. _And I took unto me two staves, the one I called __ Beauty, and the other I called Bands, and I fed the flock._ The parallelism between these two staves strikingly appears in the circumstance that the most remarkable prophecies, as the liiid. chapter of Isaiah, which the Christian conceives to be exactly fulfilled in the person and character of Christ, the Jew imagines to accord as perfectly with the circumstances and condition of the house of Israel. May we not suppose them to be designedly applicable to both? instrumental alike to the same great purpose, man’s redemption from idolatry. One of the earliest acts of Christ, who, however, did every thing in the name of the Father, was his exposing the unfitness of the Jewish leaders, who were the priests, the scribes, and the elders, to be the spiritual guides of the flock. Their selfishness and hypocrisy he unsparingly denounced, as rendering them unfit for such an office; of which they were consequently deprived under the new dispensation. Such appears to be the purport of the following verse, as ably expounded by Lowth. _Three shepherds also I cut off in one month, and my soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me._ _One month_, is an indefinite expression for a short time, as if the prophet had said, _at once_. When the people had been duly warned against these treacherous guides; those who chose to disregard that warning, had no reason to complain, if it pleased Heaven to leave them to their fate, as is next declared. _Then said I, I will not feed you; that that dieth, let it die, and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another._