14): "in the place where," or, more literally still, "in the place that"--the wider designation instead of the narrower. The _status constr._ is explained by the circumstance that the whole succeeding sentence together expresses only one substantive idea, equivalent to: "in the place of the being said unto them." The place may here be, either that where the people first received the name Lo-Ammi, _i.e._, Palestine, or the place of the exile, where they first felt the full meaning of it,--the misery being a _sermo realis_ of God. Decisive in favour of the latter reference is the following verse, where the הארץ, the land of the exile, corresponds with מקים in the verse before us. (According to _Jonathan_, the sense is: "In the place to [Pg 221] which they have been carried away among the Gentiles.") It is intentionally that both times the Future יֵאָמֵר is used, which is to be understood as the Present. The difference of time being thus disregarded, the contrast becomes so much the more striking.--By "people" and "children" of God, the same thing is expressed according to different relations. The Israelites were the people of God, inasmuch as He was their King; and children of God, in as far as He was their Father,--their Father, it is true, in the first place, not, as in the New Testament (John i. 12, 13), in reference to the spiritual generation, but in relation to heart-felt love, similar to the love of a father for a son. With regard to the Old Testament idea of son ship to God, compare the remarks on Ps. ii. 7. In this relation, sometimes all Israel is personified as the son of God; thus, _e.g._, Exod. iv. 22: "Thus thou shalt say unto Pharaoh: My son. My first-born is Israel." Sometimes the Israelites are also called the _children_ or _sons_ of God; _e.g._, Deut. xiv. 1: "Ye are children to the Lord your God" (compare also Deut. xxxii. 19), although not every single individual could on this account be called "son of God." In this sense, that designation is never used, evidently because the sonship under the Old Testament does not rest so much on the personal relation of the single individual to God,--as is the case in the New Testament,--but the individual rather partakes in it only as a part of the whole. But there is an easy transition from the sonship as viewed in the Old Testament, to the sonship as seen in the New. The former, in its highest perfection, cannot exist at all without the latter. It is only when its single members are born of God, that the Congregation can be regarded and treated as the child of God in the full sense of the word, and that the whole fulness of His love can be poured out upon it; for this is the only way of attaining to likeness with God, which is the condition of admission to the rights of children. Hence it appears that the υἱοθεσία under the Old Testament was an actual prophecy of the times of the New Testament; and from it, it follows also that the announcement under consideration has its