{8a} See Psalm xxii. throughout. The difficulties attending the _entire_ application of the psalm to Christ are by no means insuperable. Scott unreservedly refers the whole to Christ. Adam Clarke dissents. Psalm lxix. is for the most part a manifest adumbration of the Messiah; and if the difficulties in the way of the entire application of the Psalm to Christ, presented in verse 5, where he is made _apparently_ to lament his foolishness and his guilt, could be surmounted, a great boon, it is conceived, would be granted to all who desire to understand what they read. The _representative_ scheme, besides being open to other objections, has no explicit authority in the Scriptures to recommend it, and the _double sense_ is now all but universally abandoned. Possibly, if the text will not yield in these cases, there are principles of interpretation involved that await future development. {8b} Gen. xlix. 21. For, “Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words,” read, “Naphtali is a spreading Pine, that putteth forth goodly boughs.” Psa. xxix. 9. For, “The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests,” read, “The voice of the Lord rendeth the pines, and layeth bare the forests.” So Dr. Lee. To surrender the Bible, body and soul, into the hands of the Massorites, as is required by their pointing of these passages, is surely asking too much. Let the reader peruse the _whole_ of the 29th Psalm, and determine the fitness of the correction for himself, which he may very safely be allowed to do. The former passage, if consistently carried out on the principles of the translators, would run, “Naphtali is a hind let loose, _that_ giveth goodly words,” in which the incongruousness of the metaphor would, if possible, be still more manifest. See Stanley’s “Syria and Palestine,” p. 355. {10a} See Preface to Herwitz’ “Etymology and Syntax of the Hebrew Language.” {10b} See Kitto’s Bib. Cyc., art. Chronicles. The whole article is very reassuring, considering the able and accomplished pen from which it proceeds. The writer, Dr. Davidson, to whom the lovers of Biblical philology are under the greatest obligations, deliberately asserts the corruption of the passages in question, and advocates a reading in conformity with the corresponding statements in 2 Samuel and Kings. {11a} Compare, among other instances in point that might be given, 1 Kings ix. 28 with 2 Chron. viii. 18. {11b} If _no_ purification of the text should avail us in these cases, it would be advisable to accompany the change in the text with a note in the margin explanatory of the corruptness of the reading that has been superseded. {13} The change of accent the word undergoes in the original when repeated in the second hemistich, gives marvellous emphasis to the exhortation—an emphasis altogether lost in the translation.