being considered as another Egypt. Compare viii. 13: "Now will He remember their iniquity and visit their sins; they shall return to Egypt;" ix. 3: "They shall not dwell in the Lord's land, and Ephraim returns to Egypt." (Compare, on this passage, the Author's _Dissertations on the Genuineness of the Pentateuch_, vol. i. p. 121 ff.) Moreover, in the other prophets also, the going up from, or deliverance out of, Egypt, forms throughout the basis of the second great deliverance. And this is quite natural; for both of those events stand in the closest actual connection with each other;--both proceeded from the same Divine Being; and the former was a prophecy _by fact_, and a pledge of the latter. The deliverance of the people of God from Egypt sealed their election; and from the latter the new deliverance necessarily followed;--a relation which repeats itself in individuals also. From this we may explain the fact that in the Psalms, they who celebrate God's former mercies, prove from them to Him and to themselves, throughout, that He must now also be their helper. It is then by no means a mere external similarity which induces the prophets ever and anon to refer to the deliverance from Egypt (compare the passages Mic. ii. 12, 13; Jer. xxiii. 7, 8, which bear so close a resemblance to the passage before us), any more than that the Passover is a mere memorial. Such cannot occur in the true religion which has a living God, and hence knows nothing of anything absolutely past. _Ewald's_ [Pg 226] exposition, that they go up out of the country for the purpose of further conquest, and that of _Simson_, that they go up to Jerusalem, sever the three events which, as the example of previous history shows, are evidently so closely allied; and these expositors, moreover, give, by an addition of their own, that definiteness to the words, "And they shall go up out of the land," which they can obtain only by a reference to the history of the past. In their ambiguity, they almost expressly point to such a commentary.--The article in הארץ, _the_ (_i.e._, the definite) land, is explained from the circumstance that, in the previous context, there had been an indirect allusion to their being carried away into a strange land. If Israel was no more the people of God,--if they no longer enjoyed His mercy, then it is supposed that they could not remain in the land which they had received only as the people of God, and had hitherto retained only through His mercy. But, primarily, the article refers to "the place where it was said unto them," in the preceding verse.--That along with the children of Israel, the children of Judah also assemble themselves and go up, implies a fact which the prophet had not expressly mentioned, because it did not stand immediately connected with his purpose--viz., that Judah too should be carried into captivity. It thus supplements chap. i. 7, by showing that the mercy there promised to the inhabitants of