there can be no longer any difficulty in making out the historical reference of the announcement before us. It cannot refer to the bodily descendants of Abraham, as such, any more than the promise of a son to Abraham was fulfilled in the birth of Ishmael, or than the Arabs stand related to the promise of the innumerable multitude of his descendants,--a promise which is repeated, in the same extent, to Isaac and Jacob, although they were not the ancestors of the Arabs. Degenerate sons are not a blessing; they are no objects of promise, no sons in the full sense. Every one is a son of Abraham, only in so far as he is a son of God. For this reason the phrases "sons of Israel" and "sons of the living God" are, in the passage before us, connected with each other. Not as though the corporeal descent were altogether a matter of indifference. The corporeal descendants of the Patriarchs had the nearest claims to becoming their children in the full sense. It was to them that the means of becoming so were first granted. To them pertained the covenants, the promises, and the adoption, Rom. ix. 4. But all these external advantages were of no avail to them when they allowed them to [Pg 220] remain unused; in these circumstances, neither the promise to Abraham, nor the announcement before us, had any reference to them. Both of them would have remained to this day unfulfilled, although the unconverted children of Israel had increased so as to have become the most populous nation on the face of the whole earth. It thus appears that the announcement before us was first truly realized in the time of the Messiah; inasmuch as it was at that time that the family of the Patriarchs was so mightily increased; and that it will yet be more fully realized, partly by the reception of an innumerable multitude of adopted sons, and partly by the elevation of those who were sons only in a lower sense, to be sons in the highest. That which occurred at the time after the Babylonish captivity, when the Lord stirred up a number of Israelites to return to Palestine, we can regard as only an insignificant prelude; partly because this number was too small to correspond, even in any degree, to the infinite extent of the promise, and partly because there were among them certainly a few only who, in the fullest sense, deserved the name of "Children of Israel." "Israel"--which is the higher name, and has reference to the relation to God--is here used emphatically, as appears especially from a comparison with ver. 4, where it is taken from the degenerate children, and exchanged for the name "Jezreel."--In the second part of the verse, we must first set aside the false interpretation of במקום אשר by "instead of," which is given by _Grotius_ and others. It has arisen from an inappropriate reference to the Latin, which has, however, no support in the Hebrew _usus loquendi_. The words can only mean (compare Lev. iv. 24, 33; Jer. xxii. 12; Ezek. xxi. 35; Neh. iv.